SOCIOLOGICAL DETERMINATION 
OF OBJECTIVES IN EDUCATION 

BY 

DAVID SNEDDEN 




Class ' \ t c i 






CopjTigteN . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



SOCIOLOGICAL DETERMINATION 
OF OBJECTIVES IN EDUCATION 



SOCIOLOGICAL DETERMINATION 
OF OBJECTIVES IN EDUCATION 



BY 

DAVID SNEDDEN 

Professor of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University 




PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 



• 5 fe b 



COPYRIGHT, 192 1, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 



PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS 

PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A. 



APR 18 1921 
©CU611670 



PREFACE 

More education and better education must be pro- 
vided by the people and for the people if the aims of 
democracy are to be realized in a populous and forward 
striving world — this has been the verdict of all thought- 
ful persons trying to read the riddles of war and of peace 
propounded by our age. 

But education is not an easily standardized com- 
modity like wheat or coal or gold. Its varieties are num- 
berless, and their gradations of worth as yet undeter- 
mined. More education — yes, if it is of right kinds; 
better education — what is it, and how shall it be known ? 
More education, always increasing in cost — for whose 
advantage? Better education — better for the individual 
or for the " small " group to which the small-souled man 
wholly gives himself, or for the state and humanity to 
which the true citizen dedicates his best efforts? 

What, in fine, should be the objectives or purposes — 
not of education in the abstract, which is a problem for 
metaphysicians — but of each of hundreds of varieties of 
education as practicable of attainment with scores of 
types of potential citizens? And how are these types of 
potential citizens to be distinguished by virtue of native 
inheritance, modifying environment and probable pros- 
pects? Here lie very many problems for future states- 
men, sociologists and educators. 

The actual objectives of much of our education still 
rest largely on faiths and beliefs — often hardened into 
dogmas as to educational values, and the ex-parte creeds 
of subject-matter specialists. College entrance require- 
ments, framed with little appreciation of the needs of 

5 



6 ' PREFACE 

democratic secondary education and with even less knowl- 
edge of the educational potentialities of adolescents, still 
constitute the only clearly defined objectives of our public 
high schools, apart from certain half-hearted com- 
mercial courses. 

Two forces are, however, now compelling sweeping 
changes in educational faiths. The multiplication of 
forms of useful knowledge that manifestly can and should 
be taught to some if not all of the rising generation 
brings us constantly into* situations where choices must 
be made. We obviously cannot have everything, and it 
is urgent that we devise means of determining which is 
the best. 

Again, the underlying social spirit of our time is op- 
posed to blind action and insists on increasing purposive- 
ness. But purposiveness in education necessitates knowl- 
edge of practicable as well as of desirable goals — practi- 
cable for learners as they now are with all their varia- 
bilities of power, capacity and opportunity; and prac- 
ticable also for given societies as they now are with their 
needs and resources. 

John Adams, the wise and witty English educator, 
told Americans some years ago that until recently edu- 
cators had not really learned the lesson that verbs of 
teaching govern two accusatives. For centuries we have 
been content to say, " The master teaches Latin " ; but 
the child-study movement forced progressive educators 
to realize that " the master teaches John (or Mary) 
Latin," and that it is of no less importance that he know 
much about John or Mary than that he know much 
about Latin. 

But the scientific spirit of our time is about to im- 
pose a new burden on the master. He must explain and 
justify his reasons for teaching Latin to John or Mary 



PREFACE 7 

instead of music or American literature or hygiene or 
carpentry. To what ends, useful to society or to the 
individual, should the Johns and Marys or some known 
varieties of them study Latin — " or anything else! " the 
fogies will exclaim. 

It is the purpose of this book to ask a variety of ques- 
tions which must be answered by sociologists and edu- 
cators before we can justifiably claim to possess a science 
of education. The writer has undertaken in each chapter 
to do at least three things, no one of which can, obviously, 
be at all completely done in the present youthful state of 
the social sciences. The first is to search for certain 
sources in the social sciences or in experience from which 
to derive standards of examination for the " faith objec- 
tives " now controlling in the departments dealt with ; 
the second is to criticize those faiths which have prob- 
ably come to have the injurious characteristics of super- 
stitions; and the third is to propose, tentatively, certain 
new objectives for examination. Each chapter is, there- 
fore, in a true sense an " essay " in educational sociology, 
designed at least to point the way to further arid more 
detailed inquiries in this field. 

Much of the material in this volume first appeared 
as articles in periodicals. This fact explains a variety 
of minor repetitions as well as some variations in style of 
treatment. The author wishes to express his sense of 
obligation to the editors of the following publications for 
permission to incorporate into this boojk materials which 
first appeared as articles in these journals : The American 
Journal of Sociology, Educational Review, International 
Journal of Ethics, School Administration, School and 
Society, School Review, Unpopular (now the Unpartizan) 
Review. D. S. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Educational Sociology: Its Province and Possibilities ii 
II. Readjustments of Schools: The Junior High School. . 38 

III. Readjustments of Curricula: High Schools and Voca- 

tional Schools 65 » 

IV. The High School of To-morrow 77 

V. The Essentials of Liberal Education Without Latin . 94 

VI. The Objectives of Mathematics 120 

VII. The Objectives of Physics 147 

VIII. Social Functions of the Fine Arts 15& 

IX. The Objectives of Education in Graphic and Plastic 

Arts 183 

X. The Objectives of History as a Social Science Study . . 207 

XI. The Objectives of Social Education 240 

XII. The Formation of Moral Character. 267^ 

XIII. The Social Objectives of Vocational Education 281 -■ 

XIV. The Objectives of the Study of Education 306 



SOCIOLOGICAL DETERMINATION 
OF OBJECTIVES IN EDUCATION 

CHAPTER I 

EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY: ITS PROVINCE 
AND POSSIBILITIES 

I. INTRODUCTORY 

Men, women, and children nearly always live and 
work in groups or societies — clans, families, clubs, vil- 
lages, partnerships, unions, cities, nations. Any given 
individual usually strives to " realize himself," to amount 
to the most possible, to " get all that he can " (in the 
more or less "long run") by virtue of the advantages 
of living and working in various groups, Because all 
other individuals do the same, group membership involves 
endless adjustments, compromises, tensions, quiet 
struggles, and sometimes open and violent conflicts. 

In any given group of human beings the " strong " 
individual usually exerts a greater influence on the 
" weak " individual than does the weak on the strong. 
(It is assumed than an individual is stronger because he 
is older, or of keener mind, or of stronger body, or of 
better training, or of greater cooperative ability than 
another.) Normally, also, however, if the weakness of 
an individual is due to youth, lack of experience, or the 
performance of special function, then strong individuals 
protect him and give him opportunity to grow to 
full usefulness. 

In any given human group a portion of the strength of 

ii 



12 EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY 

any individual is due, as in the case of animals, to innate 
or (biologically) inherited powers and capacities as these 
developi when given time and nuture. But another por- 
tion is due to the stored knowledge, tools, and methods of 
living and work which the group has accumulated and 
passes on to new members by example and education. 
The " strength " of a social group, therefore, consists not 
only of the sum of the biological strengths of the indi- 
viduals composing it at any one time, but also of the 
character and amount of this accumulated knowledge — 
the social inheritance which can in part exist outside of 
any individuals for the time being (such as inventions, 
laws, books). 

The foregoing paragraphs, which could easily be in- 
definitely multiplied, express some o>f the truisms of con- 
temporary sociological science. They suggest that the 
sociologist thinks constantly in terms of social groups of 
human beings, but also in terms of the individuals com- 
posing these groups. Numberless quotations from soci- 
ological writers could be cited which would seem to 
suggest, too, that the sociologist is frequently preoccupied 
with aspirations and plans for " improving " conditions or 
for discovering the means whereby more individuals may 
have more well-being than is now the case. 

But the sociologist is clearly not the only man to have 
these aspirations and plans. Deep-rooted in the nature 
of every man, animal, and plant, too, probably, is the am- 
bition, desire, instinct, or vital tendency (call it what we 
will) to "get on," to survive, to accomplish as much as 
possible. Very early in the lives of many species it is 
found that these results can best be accomplished by co- 
operations — and cooperative abilities become as much the 
ends of evolution through natural selection or through 
design as protecting horns, or bigger muscles, or more 



INTRODUCTORY 13 

active brain. Nearly all inventions, governments, re- 
ligions, and social customs have been evolved to help men 
to " get on," to have "life more abundantly." Hence a 
very large portion of the effort that men have expended on 
inventions, governments, religions, and other social 
agencies has been expended to help either these persons 
themselves, or others in whom they were interested, to 
have life more abundantly, to realize more happiness and 
less suffering, to "multiply and replenish the earth," and to 
enjoy the fullness thereof. Every man who has led an 
army to punish an enemy or has tried to further a religion 
has been concerned with his own or his fellows' well- 
being. So' has every man who has sought to discover a 
new, or to improve an old, tool ; to add new knowledge to 
the social inheritance; to make two blades of grass grow 
where but one grew before ; to heal the sick ; to reform the 
delinquent; to promote justice; or to educate the young. 
It can be said of the sociologist only that he is trying 
to see social conditions more comprehensively and a little 
more profoundly than these others. He is trying to* get at 
the more obscure relations and processes involved and to 
substitute tested knowledge for the half -knowledge of 
inference or slowly evolved faiths. Quite probably he 
finds it especially desirable that some persons shall study 
those things affecting human well-being which are im- 
portant over long periods of time and for large numbers 
of people. Often he becomes especially solicitous for the 
well-being of those weaker ones who seem to be crowded 
down or aside by stronger individuals or stronger groups 
in pursuit of their ends. Sociology is still a very young 
science, a very imperfectly developed field of knowledge ; 
and conscious applications of its results have been made 
in only a few of the major departments of human action. 
The sociologist has already exerted visible influence in the 



i 4 EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY 

treatment of dependency and crime. Indirectly he seems 
to be affecting policies of control of colonial dependencies 
and of state oversight or direction of some phases of pro- 
duction. But he has had as yet little recognition in prac- 
tical efforts to improve religion, war, finance, economic 
production in general, domestic life, or education. 

Nevertheless, it is certain that sociology is now rapidly 
amassing knowledge and evolving methods which must 
soon find application in all departments of social study. 
It has frequently happened that a department of practical 
effort has advanced far as an art before science became 
available for application. The working of iron and steel 
had reached an advanced stage of development before 
physics and chemistry gave a basis for scientific metal- 
lurgy. Tillage of the soil and breeding of domestic 
animals had elaborate technics before chemistry and biol- 
ogy had reached a stage where help could be procured 
from them. Healing the sick and preventing disease had 
become highly developed arts long before the appearance 
of physiology or bacteriology as sciences. Pedagogical 
practice, in schools and elsewhere, had produced its arts 
and its discussions of teaching problems long before men 
thought of applying psychology to their elucidation. 

There are many indications that sociology has now 
reached a stage of evolution where its findings and 
methods can in large measure be made available for the 
further development of government, cooperative produc- 
tion, religion, domestic life, and education. It is note- 
worthy that traditions, beliefs, faiths, and customs play 
a large part in any field of practice in the stages prior to 
the application of knowledge and methods from the 
sciences; in fact, they frequently constitute the bulk 
of the social inheritance of guiding principles of aim, 
procedure, and valuation. Such was the case with the 



PURPOSES 15 

mechanical industries largely until the end of the eight- 
eenth century ; such was the case with medicine and agri- 
culture (except as to a few factors) until well along in 
the nineteenth century; and such is still, in large meas- 
ure, the case with education, social control, and 
domestic life. 

But we are clearly approaching a time of transition 
even in the new fields. Hardly a modern problem of 
politics, religion, education, economics, or community 
cooperation but forces us back to needs of more exact 
knowledge that in the last resort only the sociologist can 
supply — or will be expected to supply — when he is ready, 
for no one can pretend that sociology, relatively, is to-day 
more advanced or more in the possession of needed keys 
of interpretation than was chemistry in 1720 or biology in 
1820. We have seen how psychology in its speculative 
stages waited generations and in its more scientific stage, 
years, until it came partly to a fruition of its dreams of 
application in the recent war. Now education, industry, 
and government are clamoring for its contributions. 

2. PURPOSES 

The time is ripe to begin a careful examination of the 
possible contributions of sociology and social economy to< 
education. The two sciences most fundamental to educa- 
tion are sociology and psychology. From sociology must 
come answers to' the question, What shall be the aims of 
education ? From psychology must come answers to the 
questions, What is the educability of the individual? and, 
How shall we best instruct, train, or otherwise educate 
toward predetermined goals? 

In the empirical fashion characteristic of social action 
in prescientific stages educators have, of course, for 
thousands of years determined the purposes of conscious 



16 EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY 

education on the basis of such knowledge and belief as 
was available regarding the needs of the family, tribe, 
state, army, craft, or church. The education of princes 
and priests, the training of captains and soldiers, and the 
instruction of citizens in reading and writing have nearly 
always been designed partly, if not chiefly, for the good 
of society or some important group thereof. At times 
it may have appeared that the good of the individual was 
the chief goal — in the teaching of Latin to the sons of 
gentlemen, a trade to the prospective guildsman, arith- 
metic to the American farmer's boy, or algebra to the 
minister's daughter. But no serious student would at any 
time have defended these efforts on purely individualistic 
grounds. The prevailing beliefs of the time held that 
the public good was somehow served through the persons 
thus rendered more cultured, keener, or more upright 
than they would otherwise have been. We may flatter 
ourselves that we have discovered the social justi- 
fications of public or endowed education; but in reality 
we have only restated ancient purposes in slightly more 
modern terms. 

Lester F. Ward, Herbert Spencer, and some other 
prominent sociologists have indicated some of the possi- 
bilities of educational sociology. But educators who have 
recently written on this subject have been unnecessarily 
modest in their claims. They have seemed to hold that 
educational sociology should concern itself only or chiefly 
with the newer extensions and modifications of educa- 
tional theory and practice. They have seemed desirous 
of avoiding recognition of the undoubted fact that the 
proper province of this study is the entire range of educa- 
tional aims, traditional and modern, social and individual. 
Its primary concern must be with normal groups being 
educated under normal conditions. 

Two recent tendencies in education have probably 



PURPOSES 17 

somewhat misled students in defining the desirable and 
practicable purposes of educational sociology. Beginning 
conspicuously about the opening of the twentieth century 
there developed certain new interests (in a few cases 
renewed interests) in those individuals and groups that 
had heretofore shared little, if at all, in the advantages 
of the schools. It was noted that only for the upper 
classes — for those likely to enter on their vocations 
through the aid of professional schools — was systematic 
vocational education available. Defectives and potential 
delinquents received small consideration in the ordinary 
schools. The special educational needs of dwellers in 
sparsely settled areas, in crowded slums, or in broken 
homes were hardly recognized, and received small atten- 
tion when recognized. Hence arose a large variety of de- 
mands that, in the interests of a sounder social economy, 
education should be extended, modified, enriched, so as 
to provide valuable offerings for these heretofore neg- 
lected classes or groups. Necessarily these demands had 
to be expressed in the sociological terminology of the day, 
and the needs described largely in language which had 
developed chiefly in connection with studies in social 
pathology — the first area of practical effort to which 
sociologist and social economist had turned. 

In the second place there developed among educators 
during the first decade of the twentieth century, and con- 
spicuously in America as an outgrowth of the child-study 
movement, a strong interest in the socialisation of educa- 
tion, including all the common varieties or grades. Among 
many able educators the conviction grew that existing 
curricula were excessively individualistic in aim as well 
as in method — that is, their effect was to induce the indi- 
vidual to think unduly in terms of personal achievement, 
to strive to win against, rather than with, his fellows, and 



18 EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY 

to ignore the realities of social interdependence. Natur- 
ally these aspirations for a more socialized education 
greatly interested students of sociology as well as edu- 
cators possessed of some insight into contemporary 
social problems. 

Valuable as have been the results of these new inter- 
ests which have somewhat linked up education as a field 
of practice with sociology as a science, it is a fact never- 
theless that their net effect has been to cause many edu- 
cators, and sociologists as well, to think that sociology 
could be of significance only in the marginal or frontier 
regions of education, and particularly where pathological 
conditions are in process of correction. Hundreds, pos- 
sibly thousands, of articles have been written during the 
last twenty years dealing with these slightly explored 
fields. But it is as yet hard to find more than a scant 
half dozen books or articles written in the conviction that 
to* sociology and studies prosecuted by sociological 
methods we must look for criteria of scientific aims in all 
education, and conspicuously in that which is to be pro- 
vided for the average or normal 90 per cent, of our folk. 

This preoccupation of pioneer educational sociologists 
with problems in the marginal fields of education was, of 
course, only to be expected. In the more ancient and 
familiar areas standards of aim are profoundly tradi- 
tional, deeply set in dogma and custom. In some cases 
processes of selection have so operated as to give these 
a very substantial validity, even though, as in the case 
of all practice based upon belief and custom, there is 
always a very marked " lag " in making the adaptations 
required in a strongly dynamic social order. But, gen- 
erally speaking, so strongly intrenched are our faiths in 
the validity of the aims usually held for educational prac- 
tice in our kindergarten, elementary and secondary 



PURPOSES 19 

schools, and liberal arts colleges, that any fundamental 
questioning of them still arouses the same mingled horror, 
resentment, and incredulity that formerly greeted re- 
ligious or medical heresies and that still fiercely confront 
much sincere and profound political criticism. 

We can readily concede that as a distinctive field of 
study educational sociology is as yet very imperfectly 
developed. It is not certain that within it are capable 
of being developed the necessary methods of attack on 
some of the most difficult of contemporary problems of 
curricula. Writers on educational sociology still slip 
constantly into the methods and language of speculative 
philosophy. Quite possibly we shall have to wait on the 
sociologists themselves for new methods of analyzing 
and evaluating the objectives of social and, therefore, 
of educational action. 

For, obviously, we can have no> satisfactory set of 
working principles in the construction of curricula until 
we possess fairly acceptable analyses, qualitative and 
quantitative, of the values of social life. Granted that 
such words as security, health, righteousness, wealth, 
knowledge, beauty, sociability, extension of race and 
communion with God express valuable ends of social 
action to be achieved partly through education, we are 
still confronted by endless problems of relative values. 
We cannot have everything within the space of a few 
years; what shall we emphasize, what ignore? Every 
educator knows to-day that, after we leave the lowest 
grades, the most serious difficulties are encountered in 
choosing among the embarrassment of riches presented 
to us. Here especially do we find ancient faith standards 
of values in conflict with modern aspirations for a scien- 
tific criteria (always condemned, of course, by conserva- 
tives, as a conflict between idealism and materialism). 



20 EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY 

3. DEFINITIONS OF AIMS 

But, in spite of the meagerness of sociological sup- 
port yet available, it is certain that scores of the hundreds 
of problems of educational aim now confronting edu- 
cators are capable of being at least somewhat elucidated 
by sociological methods. It is especially important that 
inquiring minds address themselves to these problems, 
even if they can piroceed only to the stage of breaking 
some of the crusts of custom and belief which have 
hitherto repelled all tools of criticism. In some respects 
work of this character should even now prove 
very productive. 

It should, for example, prove easily practicable, given 
sufficient working resources, to analyze, classify, and, at 
least crudely, to evaluate the habits, knowledge, appre- 
ciations, aspirations, and ideals promotive of such values 
as health, wealth, sociability, and righteousness which 
given groups or classes of adults possess, and to 1 trace to 
their respective sources in original nature, environmental 
influence (including by-education), and school education 
these various qualities. It could be ascertained how far 
such of these qualities as are demonstrably valuable to the 
possessor himself, or indirectly through him to society, 
have been produced by school education or, in its absence, 
through by-education or fostered development. The 
foundations could thus be laid for investigations and 
experimental procedures designed to determine how far 
direct education could or should be provided to reinforce 
or supersede by-education. 

In the case of qualities demonstrably unsatisfactory, 
as gauged by standards of a scheme of social values 
approved by a representative jury, similar inquiries could 
be made. How far, for the next generation, can the con- 



DEFINITIONS OF AIMS 21 

ditions of defective by-education be corrected, apart from 
the procedures of direct education? how far through pro- 
posed new forms of direct education? 

As a means of giving concrete illustration to some 
possible studies in this field the examples given below are 
submitted. It is freely conceded that the suggested find- 
ings are excessively dogmatic in form and possibly specu- 
lative in origin. Nevertheless, it is confidently believed 
that the problems suggested are even now capable of 
attack by methods reasonably scientific. 

1. When leading legislators, social economists, busi- 
ness men, and educators became convinced a few years 
ago that the well-being of American society as well as 
that of mostvof the individuals composing that society 
required substantial extensions of special facilities for 
education for vocational competency, and when it be- 
came apparent that such extensions could be assured only 
through vocational schools provided at public expense, 
problems of specific aim and method immediately ap- 
peared in large number. What was meant by vocational 
education ? For what occupations were vocational schools 
desirable ? for what practicable ? At what ages, for stated 
vocations, should or could school vocational education 
begin? What should or could be the relations of school 
vocational education to commercial work, to productive 
enterprise, to> apprenticeship, to shifting or promotion 
from one stage to another? 

Throughout the earlier stages of evolution of school 
vocational education (of less than professional grade), 
theorists and doctrinaires found endless opportunities for 
expression. Little was definitely known about the peda- 
gogy of vocational education and hardly more about local- 
ized and specific needs for it. A variety of courses in 
manual training and household arts had been developed 



22 EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY 

in schools and these presented to citizens many of the 
semblances of vocational education. A variety of so- 
called commercial and agricultural subjects had also 
been introduced into schools which (with the exception 
of typewriting and stenography) were actually designed 
more to impart general information about some voca- 
tions than to prepare for competency in their pursuit, 
perhaps in the vague expectancy that such information 
would, in some invisible way, function as vocational 
competency later. 

It was only when objective sociological studies of the 
conditions surrounding the work of men and women in 
actual vocational practice were instituted that the pro- 
moters of vocational education found themselves on 
sound ground. Surveys were begun with a view to ob- 
taining reasonably correct answers to such questions as 
these: What are the various vocations now followed in 
a given community? How many workers in each? 
When, where, and how did these acquire the competency 
they now possess ? Were the methods followed by them 
in acquiring their present vocational powers (chiefly 
through extra-school education, of course) effective, or 
ineffective, wasteful, or the reverse? Is it in evidence 
(here or abroad) that school programs of training and 
instruction could be devised (as they have for several of 
the professions) which would give, in whole or in part, 
more effective vocational education for specific vocations 
than does now apprenticeship or the fortuitous conditions 
of wage-earning participation ? What should be the pro- 
gram of such a school to insure specified vocational skills? 
Technical knowledge? Social insight (related to the 
specific vocation) ? 

Our accumulations of knowledge resulting from this 
method of study are meager enough as yet, but such as 



DEFINITIONS OF AIMS 23 

they are they present good evidence of being soundly 
based and relatively free of speculative elements and 
mystical assumptions. 

2. School curricula are usually designed for normal 
children. What shall be done for those that are greatly 
abnormal or variant ? As a rule, philanthropy rather than 
the state first undertakes to provide education for the 
blind and the deaf, the moron and the delinquent. The 
very conditions of variance encountered force certainly 
highly specialized or new types of training — touch read- 
ing for the blind, manual communication for the deaf, 
objective instruction for the moron, occupational train- 
ing for the delinquent. But beyond these departures, his- 
toric curricula for variant children have been patterned 
almost rigidly after curricula for normal children. Even 
yet in many schools teachers are striving to impart to 
blind children the same knowledge of geography that is 
sought on behalf of normal children; in schools for the 
deaf, it is a usual boast that the customary " high-school " 
studies are taught; and even for morons the standards of 
intellectual attainment sought, for example, in arithmetic, 
hardly differ in scope and content from those held in 
other schools. 

Nevertheless, there has been progress in recent years, 
especially in the less " institutionalized " schools. Cer- 
tain fundamental questions, obviously inspired by soci- 
ological considerations, are being asked. Are the pupils 
of a given class and grade being trained in the expecta- 
tion that they will eventually leave the school and' par- 
ticipate on a free competitive basis in the work of the 
world? Or is it expected that they will remain for life 
the protected wards of the state? According to the 
answers to these questions, for given groups of variant 
children, programs of education will obviously differ 



24 EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY 

greatly; and that fact is gradually being given influence 
in shaping the principles governing curricula. 

But this method of inquiry has gone further. It has 
resulted in the foundation of many varieties of classes 
for children who are less manifestly variants than are the 
blind, deaf, and moron. It has given us special classes, 
opportunity classes, ungraded classes, certain types of 
so-called prevocational schools, day truant schools, and 
several others. Gradually specific aims, more or less 
empirically derived, are being differentiated for the vari- 
ous groups thus recognized. 

Here again it is obvious that, given resources and 
time, it should now prove practicable to carry sociological 
methods of inquiry very far in determining the types of 
special schools that society should provide and the cur- 
ricula and conditions needed for each type. 

3. The responsibilities for collective thinking and act- 
ing forced upon us by the war gave rise to fears that our 
democracy would not be equal to the strain put upon it. 
To many it appeared that we had allowed our education, 
and especially that of the public schools, toi become ex- 
cessively individualistic. Doctor Bagley, writing in 
April, 1 91 8, said: 

" For the first time in our history our people are 
awakening to the fact that an educational system in a 
democracy has a fundamental duty to discharge in insur- 
ing a thorough-going community of ideals, aspirations, 
and standards of conduct. ... It is safe to say that 
the actual sanctions that have operated to promote uni- 
versal education in this country have been essentially 
individualistic. . . . The people are thinking to-day 
as never before in terms of common good. They are 
insisting that the common good shall be the fundamental 
standard in the administration of business, transporta- 



DEFINITIONS OF AIMS 25 

tion, and industry, as well as in the conduct of public 
affairs. . . . To-day it is clear that the primary func- 
tion of education in a democracy is to integrate rather 
than to differentiate the people." 

The " Commission on the Reorganization of Second- 
ary Education " created by the National Educational 
Association, states, among its " cardinal principles," under 
the head, " The unifying function " : 

" In some countries a common heredity, a strongly 
centralized government, and an established religion con- 
tribute to social solidarity. In America, racial stocks are 
widely diversified, various forms of social heredity come 
into conflict, differing religious beliefs do> not always make 
for unification, and the members of different vocations 
often fail to recognize the interests that they have in 
common with others. The school is the one agency that 
may be controlled definitely and consciously by our 
democracy for the purpose of unifying the people. In 
this process the secondary school must play an important 
part because the elementary school with its immature 
pupils cannot alone develop the common knowledge, com- 
mon ideals, and common interest essential to Amer- 
ican democracy." 

Now it is highly probable that back of these ideals 
and aspirations, of which many expressions similar to the 
foregoing could be cited, there is a fundamental need of 
readjustments in present-day education, possibly for some 
redirection of its aims and procedures. But it is very 
unlikely that we shall make substantial progress away 
from present educational customs — which are tardily 
affected by social evolution — until sociological analysis is 
ready to show us far more specifically than do contem- 
porary critics of " individualistic " education what we 
should do in the schools to promote " integrating " func- 



26 EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY 

tions. Vague philosophical aspirations here require much 
supplementing with concrete proposals and these tested 
by available facts of sociology. 

It is essential, for one thing, that we should detect, 
describe, and evaluate the integrating agencies now ac- 
tively functional throughout America, apart from the 
schools. What are the effects of newspapers, movies, 
labor organizations, advertising, consumption of branded 
staples, and standards of living rising everywhere toward 
an American optimum,? What are the effects on " melt- 
ing pot " processes of the migration of laborers, Pullman 
car mixing of the leaders, our multitudinous fraternal and 
other organizations, and party politics? Certainly the 
hundred millions in these forty-eight states are, in spite 
of diversities of race, place of birth, religion, and culture 
inheritance a remarkably homogeneous body to-day. May 
they not possess, for practical purposes, a considerably 
greater homogeneity than critics have feared, especially 
when confronted by rationally perceived need for con- 
cert of action? 

Nevertheless, divisive influences are certainly to be 
found, some rooted in the past, some arising from new 
strains imposed upon the social structure. Probably some 
of these are very serious. Perhaps the schools should 
play a more effective part than they do now in furthering 
social solidarity. What schools — kindergartens, elemen- 
tary schools, junior schools, high schools, colleges? 
What, specifically, should they do? Toward what col- 
lective ends of appreciation, habit, ideal knowledge, should 
they work? 

Now we can make some slight progress in these mat- 
ters, in spite of the hugeness and complexity of the prob- 
lems involved, by following the trial-and-error, 
hit-or-miss, empirical methods of our forefathers, just 



DEFINITIONS OF AIMS 27 

as in time we could, probably, have made some progress 
in combating yellow fever even if we had known nothing 
of bacteriology. But certainly under these conditions 90 
to 99 per cent, of the energy we expend will be inevitably 
wasted. New methods of attack, at least partically scien- 
tific in character, are needed. Can these be supplied by 
sociologist and social economist? In part, yes. For the 
rest the educator must himself develop methods of anal- 
ysis and valuation of the social phenomena with which 
he must largely deal. Until he does this it is to be feared 
that much of our discussion, especially of more adequate 
" social " aims for education, will evaporate as fruit- 
less speculation. 

4. Heretofore, the American elementary school has 
comprised at least eight grades or years within which 
practically no flexibility of courses has been found, with 
the single exception that girls have not been required to 
take manual training or boys household arts. But there 
is now well under way a strongly defined movement so to 
reorganize elementary education that only the first six 
grades shall constitute the elementary school proper, the 
remaining grades and perhaps the first grade of the high 
school to be organized as a new type of school. 

The processes of reorganization here at once throw 
us back on fundamental questions of aim. In what re- 
spects shall we, in the new school, change the historic 
or traditional aims, as expressed in the " subjects of 
study " and the more or less standardized methods of 
teaching them? To what extent shall we provide for 
flexibility either through elective offerings or optional 
courses? Shall we introduce into this school offerings not 
heretofore found in the seventh and eighth grades — for- 
eign languages, algebra, " vocational subjects " ? Should 
we in the junior high school greatly modify the traditional 



28 EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY 

staples of all schools— arithmetic, grammar, geography, 
American history, literature — or those newer subjects 
prized by progressive schools — manual training, house- 
hold arts, music, drawing, civics, physical training, gen- 
eral science, and vocational guidance? 

For the present the situation is one of confusion. The 
historic studies, deeply rooted in custom and, frequently, 
popular approval, exhibit as yet few changes, even in 
progressive junior high schools. The newer studies en- 
counter opposition because their actual objectives are as 
yet so ill-defined. 

Any serious discussion of the junior high-school cur- 
riculum soon drives back to a number of fundamental 
questions of educational aim. What should be the pri- 
mary purposes of the school education of normal children 
between the ages of twelve and fourteen or fifteen, having 
regard to American conditions and requirements and the 
fact that we live in the twentieth century ? Is it desirable 
or expedient that we offer vocational training or instruc- 
tion during these years? For what purposes, of what 
kinds, and under what conditions? Toward the attain- 
ment of what educational goals shall we offer or require 
Latin, manual training, grammar, geography, and voca- 
tional guidance? How can we ascertain that the goals 
ordinarily proposed for these subjects are worth while? 
Are they worth while to all individuals, or to society 
through all individuals, or only to some individuals ? To 
what extent is it desirable that all pupils in the junior 
high school be required to pursue the same studies in 
order that the school may adequately meet its responsi- 
bilities as a " socially unifying" agency? 

In numberless ways we are thus thrown back upon 
fundamental problems of educational aim which only more 
extensive and, in places, more intensive, knowledge of 



CRITICISM OF STUDIES 29 

social needs than we now possess will enable us to solve. 
Especially good examples of these problems are found in 
connection with current attempts to' reorganize and mod- 
ernize high-school education. 

4. CRITICISM OF STUDIES 

5. Some new problems have here been brought to 
general attention by the recent development of definite 
demands that schools for vocational education be made 
available for youths from fourteen to eighteen years of 
age in those occupational fields in which suitable voca- 
tional education can be given during these years. The 
upholders of the traditional curricula of secondary 
schools, such curricula being composed largely of the 
classic and modern languages, mathematics, two or three 
sciences, English, and history, have taken alarm lest the 
competition of the " vocational " studies or courses drive 
out the old studies; perhaps, just as, according to 
Gresham's law, bad money drives out good! Certainly 
if the recommendations of the National Education 
Association Commission on the Reorganization of 
Secondary Education were carried out, such results 
might well be feared. That Commission's " Cardinal 
Principles " includes : 

" The work of the senior high school should be orgarir 
ized into differentiated curriculums. The range of such 
curriculums should be as wide as the school can offer 
effectively. The basis of differentiation should be, in the 
broad sense of the term, vocational, thus justifying the 
names commonly given, such as agricultural, business, 
clerical, industrial, fine-arts, and household arts curric- 
ulums. Provision should be made also for those having 
distinctively academic interests and needs. The conclu- 
sion that the work of the senior high school should be 



30 EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY 

organized on the basis of the curriculums does not imply 
that every study should be determined by the dominant 
element of that curriculum. Indeed any such practice 
would ignore other objectives of education just as im- 
portant as that of vocational efficiency. ,, 

Against such proposals as this, what shall we hold as 
to the historic studies? Latin has long been supposed 
to be a valuable " cultural " study and an unequaled means 
of mental discipline. Can we prove its value ? What do 
we mean, specifically, by cultural studies? by mental 
discipline? Is it known that Latin makes valuable con- 
tributions to these ends, or do we only believe so by virtue 
of long reliance on dogma and custom? 

But what of mathematics? of history? of physics and 
chemistry ? even of English literature ? How do we know 
that as prescribed or elected, these studies produce valu- 
able results? Valuable results for whom? for society? 
Do they serve to "integrate" society? to lift levels of 
general culture? to improve democracy? 

6. We are thus forced back again to fundamental 
problems. What are the valid aims of non- vocational 
education? How are these aims best to be realized 
through youths from fourteen to eighteen years of age? 
What is the place of prescription in such education? 
Where and under what conditions is flexibility danger- 
ous? We are accustomed to say, somewhat vaguely, that 
in a democracy good citizenship and moral character 
must be primary aims of all education and especially of 
secondary education. But how, with sufficient concrete- 
ness for purposes of framing programs of instruction and 
training, and of testing results, shall we analyze and define 
good citizenship? And how can we determine the means 
of realizing it? 

It is vaguely assumed that the study of history con- 
tributes somehow to the appreciations, ideals, attitudes, 



CRITICISM OF STUDIES 31 

and enlightenment which fuse into good citizenship. But 
our customary assumptions here are painfully vague. Is 
any one field of history equally good with any other for 
these purposes? Is the history of the Grecian states of 
equal importance with that of the thirteen colonies? The 
Franco-Prussian War with the Civil War? The life of 
Alexander the Great with that of Roosevelt? Ben Hur 
with The Crossing? The barbarian invasions with the 
westward movement? 

Now, time is short and art is long. If we are to use 
history and other social-science studies as means of mak- 
ing good citizens we need to know much more about 
specific objectives than is now the case. Obviously, we 
must turn to sociology in increasing measure for light. 
Even now sociology can make important contributions 
through its knowledge of social control, social ascend- 
ancy, and social processes. 

7. A fascinating field of study, in this connection, is 
the fine arts. Literature, music, the plastic arts, and danc- 
ing have obviously played a large part in bringing society 
to the levels ®i advancement it has, in certain countries, 
reached to-day. We are striving to develop art studies 
in our schools. Are we well advised? Can we deliber- 
ately train youth in those form of appreciation of art 
that will elevate individuals and improve the group life 
of the future? It is sometimes said that art is necessary 
to give us " ideals." Ideals in what fields of activity — 
economic, religious, political, martial, domestic? What 
kinds of ideals? What kinds of art produce such ideals? 
In fields where scientific knowledge has rapidly accumu- 
lated, do the aesthetic emotions or appreciations play in- 
creasing or diminishing roles? It would be interesting to 
know, in this connection, why so many sociologists seem 
to avoid areas of aesthetic activity in their analyses. 



32 EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY 

8. For reasons that need not be examined here, the 
mathematical studies early assumed a great ascendancy 
in America. Text-books in mental and in written arith- 
metic were formerly voluminous indeed, and on their 
study children of a generation ago< expended a large pro- 
portion of available time and energy. Algebra and geom- 
etry were long the hardest and most rigidly prescribed 
staples of secondary education. 

A part of this ascendancy, especially of mental arith- 
metic, algebra, and geometry, was due to a belief, long 
held, that these studies rendered peculiarly valuable ser- 
vice as mental gymnastics. This belief having been under- 
mined and largely wrecked by psychological studies in 
recent years, the entire question of the desirable and 
profitable aims of the mathematical studies is now in 
process of being opened up. The processes of " cut-and- 
try " have resulted in the elimination of much of the pre- 
posterous mental arithmetic of former generations as well 
as of antique topics in written arithmetic. But we have 
had as yet no adequate examination of the values, actual 
or potential, of the mathematical studies as a whole, and 
it is not clear how we can obtain such an examination 
until we shall have devised sociological methods of ap- 
proach to the questions involved. 

The present writer has suggested, as a means to this 
end, a classification of the supposed " values " resulting 
from the mathematical studies into' " producers' " and 
" consumers' " values. It is a matter of common observa- 
tion that mastery of some forms of mathematical knowl- 
edge and process plays an important part in certain 
vocational fields. — those for example of the bookkeeper, 
electrical engineer, statistician, money changer, artillery 
officer, cattle buyer, machinist, and navigator. But in 
many other vocations it would seem that mathematical 



CRITICISM OF STUDIES 33 

powers play a very small part — those for example of 
doctor, lawyer, clergyman, editor, dentist, street-car 
motorman, kindergarten teacher, spinner, cook, shoe- 
factory hand, infantryman, and tailor. 

Given the necessary means, it would certainly be prac- 
ticable to ascertain, with considerable precision, the quan- 
tity and kind of mathematical knowledge and skill now 
required for the successful performance of the hundreds 
of vocations whereby men live. Given these foundations 
it would not be impracticable to' develop a consensus of 
reasonably expert judgment as to what the next genera- 
tion of workers in these various lines of work should 
have beyond the possessions (in mathematical powers) 
of the present generation. 

But some mathematics functions in life otherwise 
than in vocation. As " consumers," that is, as buyers of 
commodities for consumption, as readers, as investors for 
future consumption, and as " appreciators " of the social 
inheritance in which we share, we need some mathematical 
knowledge and appreciation. As life is ordered at present, 
perhaps this amount is not large; but such as it is, it is 
doubtless important. Now it is submitted that, by the 
application of suitable sociological methods, it is entirely 
practicable to discover the scope and character of mathe- 
matical knowledge now used in any given " standard of 
living," class or group, and, on the basis of the facts thus 
found and evaluated, to propose necessary or desirable 
improvements in processes of instruction and training 
to be applied to the rising generation. 

The importance of some such procedure as that here 
indicated appears when it is remembered that men differ 
greatly in their vocations, but only slightly in their utiliza- 
tions. Instruction and training in mathematics for voca- 
tional purposes will clearly have to be highly specialized 



34 EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY 

and taken only after the vocational destination of the 
learner has been determined with reasonable probability. 
(The only alternative would be to teach all mathematics 
to all learners, because of our ignorance of their voca- 
tional goals, just as we might insist on teaching trigonom- 
etry to a million youths who are to serve in a future army, 
since we do not yet know which particular 2 per cent, of 
them will become artillery officers or navigators having 
acute need for trigonometry.) But mathematics of util- 
ization (consumers' mathematics) may justifiably be 
made a common subject for all, at least within the stages 
decreed by prevailing standards of living. 

But better methods of attack on the problems of aim 
or objective for mathematics in school than the one sug- 
gested above can probably be devised. Surely in view of 
the large part played by prescribed mathematics in ele- 
mentary and secondary education and the inherent prob- 
ability that existing aims and standards have been 
determined excessively by traditions and custom, such 
sociological studies of objectives are desirable. 

5. CHARACTER OF COURSES 

So much for some of the possible objectives of re- 
search in educational sociology. What shall or can be 
the character of the study itself? Can it consist of well- 
organized bodies of knowledge, characterized by unique 
and well-defined method? There is an old feud between 
the devotees of pure, and those of applied, science. The 
artists, too, have their troubles as between pure and ap- 
plied art. Will the sociologist recognize an " educational 
sociology " ? Can the educator afford to ? 

It would seem that analogies from other fields should 
help here; but even cursory inquiry shows that clear 
precedents are not to be found. It is easy to recognize 



CHARACTER OF COURSES 35 

in the world of actual affairs such distinctive fields of 
practice as medicine, war, farming, transportation, nurs- 
ing, manufacture, navigation, mining, and building. It 
is well known, too, that workers in each of these fields 
have to draw on certain " pure " sciences for help. Thus 
medicine draws conspicuously on chemistry, bacteriology, 
and physiology; war on mechanics, chemistry, mathe- 
matics, and, now, psychology (note how many scientific 
organizations have recently discussed the topic, " The 

Part Played by the Science of in the War") ; 

farming on chemistry, physics, and biology; transporta- 
tion on physics and mathematics; nursing on biology, 
chemistry, etc. ; manufacture on mathematics, economics, 
physics, and chemistry, at least ; navigation on astronomy 
and mathematics; mining on geology, chemistry, and 
mechanics; and building on mathematics, mechanics, 
and others. 

In all of these fields where pure science and practical 
achievement join hands there seems always to have pre- 
vailed a deep-seated reluctance to define or bound the 
" liaison " topics. The academic mind seems always to 
have preferred to require the student to " get " the pure 
subject as a whole and then to make his " applications," 
however long, tedious, and unproductive the process. 
A good example is found in farming. Scientific tillage 
of the soil utilizes in important measure certain knowl- 
edge met with in pure form in physics. But the range of 
physics is very vast, whereas that of " soil physics " is 
very limited. But the usual academic theory requires 
that the student of agronomy should come prepared in 
physics — although manifestly optics, acoustics, mag- 
netism, and probably many other topics have not the 
slightest relevancy to the farmer's work. 

In all other fields similar conditions prevail. Only 



36 EDUCATIONAL SOCIOLOGY 

rarely is the student of engineering permitted to concen- 
trate on those phases of mathematics that are functional 
in his profession. Physicians and nurses must take biol- 
ogy, although even that subject applies only in part to 
their prospective work. Miners study all of geology, war 
leaders all of chemistry, as these subjects are organized 
into introductory texts. 

Now the prevailing tendency on the part of educators 
to require that " applied phases " of science shall be apn 
proached from the background of the science as a whole 
seems often to have prevented definite organization of 
the linking topics. It is true we have soil physics, agri- 
cultural chemistry, educational psychology, and medical 
biology. But these subjects only occasionally adhere with 
any precision to the fields apparently delimited. In fact, 
it would appear that, seeking a logical organization, for 
which they are ill-adapted, they fail of all organization. 

Education, like medicine and the other fields referred 
to, is also an ancient area of organized practical effort. 
It, too, can and should draw upon the sciences for guid- 
ance — especially upon psychology for method and upon 
sociology for objectives, but also upon biology and physi- 
ology, architecture and statistics, for help in particular 
needs. Indeed, we already have numberless texts on edu- 
cational psychology, and we may now expect many on 
educational sociology. 

But can we require somehow that educators will go 
to sociology chiefly for those contributions that can actu- 
ally assist them in solving problems peculiar to education ? 
The idealist, of course, holds that all problems belong to 
education; but that is not a view that can prevail with 
the man who effectively plans or executes the day's work. 
Surely we shall waste valuable time and effort if we 
repeat for all our pedagogical builders the educational 



CHARACTER OF COURSES 37 

mistakes made in medicine, engineering, and other similar 
areas where even the prospective soldier of average abil- 
ity has been forced to attempt to build the same founda- 
tions as the man quite certainly destined to be a general 
or field marshal. 

And what shall we say to the study of educational 
sociology by those thousands of bright, wholesome girls, 
who throng the classrooms of normal schools, and who 
will give from three to six years to the vocation of teach- 
ing ere they embark on the long voyage of matrimony and 
homemaking? Must they, too, be expected to build on 
broad foundations? Not least, certainly, among the prob- 
lems confronting educators, is that of determining the 
desirable and practicable objectives of vocational train- 
ing for the various teaching callings. Here, certainly, 
we have need of all the leadership the professor of peda- 
gogy can give us. 



CHAPTER II 

READJUSTMENTS OF SCHOOLS : THE JUNIOR 

HIGH SCHOOL 

The new social economy developed during the clos- 
ing years of the nineteenth, and the opening years of the 
twentieth, centuries has already imposed many new de- 
mands on public and private education. In some cases 
these new demands can well be met by extensions or 
readjustments in historic types of schools — kindergarten, 
elementary, high, collegiate. In other cases new types of 
schools, with specialized aims, equipment and supervision 
may have to be created — especially for vocational edu- 
cation, continuation school education, and the like. Apart 
from current movements to develop specialized voca- 
tional schools for the rank and file of prospective workers 
the most important and fruitful of current efforts at 
administrative readjustment center around the proposed 
new type of school, sometimes called the intermediate, 
and sometimes the junior high, school. 

I. THE PRESENT SITUATION 

These efforts, now being made in various states, con- 
template the reorganization of curricula of training and 
instruction for children from twelve to fourteen or fifteen 
years of age. We are justified in assuming without argu- 
ment that the scope and character of that instruction and 
training are expected by all progressive educators to be 
materially modified in the near future. Readjustments 
in administrative plans, restatement of purposes, and new 
developments in means and methods employed are now 
38 



THE PRESENT SITUATION 39 

under way. For some years educators have discussed 
plans for a " six and six " division of the years given 
to elementary and secondary education ; and we now hear 
much about the intermediate school and the junior high 
school as means of providing better education for chil- 
dren from twelve to fourteen years of age. Already a 
large number of interesting experiments in this direction 
are being tried. These experiments suggest several quite 
distinct questions of an administrative nature. For ex- 
ample: (a) Is it desirable that pupils in the seventh and 
eighth grades, or even all elementary pupils over twelve 
years of age shall be taken away from schools containing 
the first six grades, to be taught in large central schools 
in urban communities and in connection with high schools 
in rural communities? (b) Have studies suited to> chil- 
dren of these ages, and highly desirable for some of them, 
so multiplied that a wide range of possible choices now 
exists or would exist if school organization permitted? 
(c) Is it desirable that different courses of instruction 
shall be available for pupils of these ages — courses having 
common studies perhaps, but varied by means of optional 
or alternative studies so as more nearly to meet the needs 
of varying powers, interests and probable future possi- 
bilities? (d) Is it desirable that courses of instruction 
shall be so flexible that individual pupils shall be enabled 
to elect studies so as to make individual programs 
of instruction? 

The existing type of elementary school organization 
as found in almost any urban community in the United 
States is usually as follows : 

(a) The school consists of eight or nine grades, 
children in which, ranging from five to about fifteen years, 
are all housed in one school building. 

(b) From one-fifth to one-third of the pupils twelve 



4 o READJUSTMENTS OF SCHOOLS 

years of age and upward are found retarded, in grades 
below the seventh, competing with younger and, as a rule, 
brighter children. 

(c) The grade teachers teach all subjects in grades 
below the seventh ; and in the seventh and eighth, all but 
manual training for boys and household arts for girls ; at 
times music and drawing are taught departmentally, and 
in perhaps three to five per cent, only of all schools fairly 
comprehensive systems of departmental teaching in gen- 
eral are found. 

(d) The upper-grade teachers are women, with in- 
creasingly rare exceptions; these women have not had 
special training for upper-grade work but are, as a rule, 
the abler of the teachers who obtained their first experi- 
ence in country schools or lower grades (upper-grade 
positions frequently carry better salaries, and are there- 
fore sought by women who expect to remain permanently 
at teaching). 

(e) The course of study is uniform for all pupils 
alike, except for the differentiation of manual training 
for boys and household arts for girls; its primary ele- 
ments are English language, English literature, geog- 
raphy, American history, and arithmetic; while hygiene, 
science, drawing, music, manual arts, civics, etc., are 
secondary or incidental elements, foreign language and 
vocational guidance being rare elements. 

(/) Standards of graduation are determined almost 
wholly by the prevailing standards of admission to< high 
school ; hence, as a rule, less than 50 per cent, of all pupils 
required to attend school obtain the elementary diploma. 

2. THE PROPOSED JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL 

The junior high school type of organization should, 
in the minds of many experts, have the following features : 



THE PROPOSED JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL 41 

(a) All children from five to twelve (except children 
under twelve who have finished the sixth grade) should 
be taught in schools located near their homes (schools 
which need not exceed four or five rooms in size), staffed 
by women teachers only. 

(b) These lower elementary schools should never be 
very large — ten or twelve rooms would be a desirable 
maximum — and the principal should be simply a head 
teacher; but for each fifty to seventy teachers in these 
schools in any community there should be a woman super- 
visor of instruction. 

(c) All children between twelve and fifteen years of 
age (including children under twelve ready for the sev- 
enth grade, and excluding children under fifteen ready 
for the regular or senior high school) should be sent to 
the central junior high school or intermediate school 
(it should be assumed that a walk of one and one-^half, 
or even two miles is not excessive for this purpose). 

(d) The course of study in the central school should 
offer the pupils a large range of elective or optional 
studies in addition to certain essentials in English lan- 
guage, English literature, American history, community 
civics, and geography, which latter should be prescribed 
for all (for retarded pupils special classes in these sub- 
jects to be formed). 

(e) Promotion should as far as practicable be by 
subject, so that a retarded pupil, for example, in the 
fourth grade in arithmetic may, if qualified, enter sev- 
enth-grade geography; and a boy backward in history 
may nevertheless take eighth-grade industrial arts (man- 
ual training) if qualified. 

(/) Teaching in the junior high school is expected 
to be departmentally organized by subjects, or, prefer- 
ably, along lines of the Gary plan, by groups of related 



42 READJUSTMENTS OF SCHOOLS 

subjects; and it is expected that this organization will 
produce a demand for specially qualified teachers. 

(g) If the state is willing to pay the price, a certain 
proportion of men teachers should be assigned to de- 
partmental positions, not primarily because they are 
necessarily better teachers than women, but because it is 
desirable to introduce, in boys' classes, at any rate, the 
influence of masculine personality. 

3. NEEDS TO BE MET 

Those who favor such reorganization of education 
as will give the six-three-three plan or the six-two- four 
plan — with the junior and senior high schools either 
as two and four year or three and three year schools 
respectively, and in any event as large central schools — do 
so because they believe that, on the whole, the psycho- 
logical conditions of children as well as their social needs 
justify such reorganization, even if it cost the com- 
munity slightly more financially. What are those condi- 
tions, and what are those needs? 

1. The conditions are summed up in the two words 
" increasing variability." Uniform programs of educa- 
tion, uniform teaching methods, and non-specialized 
teachers presuppose groups of people of substantially uni- 
form characteristics. But all recent inquiries tend to bring 
into relief facts as to the increasing unlikeness of children 
beyond twelve years of age. )Ve recognize them as differ- 
ing moderately as regards height, weight, and bodily 
strength ; materially as regards abilities in such studies as 
literature, vernacular language, and history; and very 
greatly indeed as regards abilities and interests in music, 
plastic and graphic art, abstract mathematics, alien lan- 
guage, and manual constructive work. 

We should not, of course, fall into the foolish error 



NEEDS TO BE MET 43 

sometimes made in educational writings, of supposing 
that these differences are greater (whatever that may 
mean) than are the resemblances or likenesses in the case 
of any two> children. Two children of twelve may differ 
in height by as much as fifteen inches, but almost never 
do they differ by 25 per cent, oi the height of the shorter. 
No two children differ as much in respect to ability to 
learn a foreign language as either one does from a horse 
or other animal as respects such learning. In the abso- 
lute sense, therefore, it may be repeated, the facts of 
resemblance among young human beings (as regards 
the elements that make groups of them relatively homo- 
geneous) are vastly more numerous and significant than 
are the facts of unlikeness. But as regards the facts of 
likeness and unlikeness that are important to education, 
to the ends and purposes for which schools exist, all 
evidence points to> the desirability and essential humane- 
ness of all arrangements which permit, in processes of 
instruction and training, recognition of deep-seated dif- 
ferences of ability, taste, and general educability. 

Let us now make two general propositions as to which 
there will be no serious debate. 

(a) If, possessed of endless resources and hampered 
by no restrictions of any kind, we were making educa- 
tional programs for our children, we would doubtless, in 
light of what we now know regarding the unlikeness of 
individuals among them, make the programs for no two 
of them exactly alike in all respects. We would pay 
tribute to obvious differences as regards the gifts be- 
stowed by the gods of heredity and early environment; 
and we would not ignore the probable opportunities and 
limitations decreed by fortune in the child's future life. 
We would strengthen some of his already strong powers ; 
and where he was weak we might justly forego to strive 



I 

44 READJUSTMENTS OF SCHOOLS 

for the powers for the foundation of which nature did 
so little. 

(b) On the other hand, except in rare cases of genius 
or defect, it is not practicable to educate children on the 
basis of strictly individual qualifications. In education, 
as in war, industry, transportation, worship, housing, and 
entertainment, economy and general efficiency require 
that we deal with people in squads, platoons and divi- 
sions. We must have companies and regiments for 
fighting; congregations for worship; gangs, crews, and 
departments in industry ; audiences and parties for enter- 
tainment; passenger groups and classes for transporta- 
tion; and grades and classes in schools. To* talk of 
individual instruction, except as that is practicable within 
group organization, is to talk nonsense, except where the 
few children of wealth and rank are concerned. We can, 
of course, strive to produce the maximum of individual 
thought, initiative and action on the part of the learner 
in the class, just as we can on the part of the unit in the 
squad, crew, congregation, audience, or passenger group. 
But it is clear that individuality of action in these groups 
must, while the ends of group action or reception are to 
be met, be greatly subordinated to the requirements of 
subjection to orders and enforced limitations, uniformity 
of stimuli, and conformity in behavior. 

In the organization of groups for school education, 
therefore, we cannot, though we would, provide special 
programs for each individual (as men and women did 
for Helen Keller). We must provide for a certain amount 
of regimentation, classification, grouping. But these 
groupings must not be fixed in rigid groups. We must 
not allow the school to become a Procrustean bedstead to 
an extent greater than is absolutely necessary and inev- 



NEEDS TO BE MET 45 

itable. We have HSd the school compared to a sawmill, 
cutting its " stock " into standardized lengths. Schools 
have done this in the past. Like armies, churches and 
transportation, schools have at times made the organiza- 
tion of groups an end rather than a means, forgetting 
that the units with which they deal are in a considerable 
measure unlike. 

2. Besides the psychological " conditions " of the in- 
dividuals composing our school classes, what are their 
social " needs " that justify the proposed reorganizations 
of upper-grade work? The keynote to these needs will 
be found in the words " progressively increasing differen- 
tiation." Modern civilized life is like modern in- 
dustry or modern army organization. Functions are 
being increasingly differentiated, and activities and inter- 
ests specialized according to all kinds of capacities 
and opportunities. 

But it should be clear at the outset that conflicts of 
social objectives must first be met. The groups into which 
children must fit are of various kinds. There are large 
groups and small groups — as (a) the nation, the religious 
denomination, the political party, the potential army of 
defence, the readers of good books, the economic organ- 
ization; and, opposed to these, (b) the local community, 
the particular church or sect, the political gang, the squad 
or mess, the partisans of a particular book or writer, the 
embattled employees of a particular industrial establish- 
ment. There are vocational, as against cultural, groups — 
farmers, machinists, bankers, teachers, waitresses, home- 
makers, and defenders, as against patrons of art, readers 
of classic literature, subscribers to specified magazines, 
visitors to the " movies," illiterates, etc. Various other 
groupings may be distinguished — such as family groups, 



46 READJUSTMENTS OF SCHOOLS 

racial groups, sociability groups, economic cooperative 
groups, worshiping groups, etc. 

Now it is one of the functions of education to predis- 
pose and fit its pupils for assimilation with the larger, 
as against the smaller, groups, in the interests of a whole- 
some social order, harmony, and economy of effort. We, 
therefore, seek that all American children shall speak 
a common tongue, write a mutually understandable prose, 
have a common knowledge of certain standard literature, 
comprehend and appreciate alike the important facts of 
our geography, history, and civic life. 

But it is another function of education to see that our 
young people are fitted efficiently to discharge their re- 
sponsibilities in the small groups of which they will 
inevitably be a part. Membership in, and sympathy with, 
the large groups of civilized society are essential to the 
harmony of the social order; but active and properly 
coordinated participation in the activities of smaller 
groups is essential to efficient personal growth, individual 
efficiency, and ultimate social usefulness. 

Hence the desirability of partial group differentiation 
of pupils even as early as twelve years of age. Their 
needs include fitting for those special group activities in 
which they can most profitably serve themselves and 
society. As to some of these children it is certain that 
their opportunities for school education will close forever 
at or near fourteen years of age. We may not always 
know the particular individuals of whom this is true — 
although a shrewd social diagnostician, knowing the facts 
as to the home conditions, school standing in studies, 
intellectual interests, general moral behavior, and physi- 
cal conditions of one hundred children at twelve years 
of age, could, I think, guess right as to 90 per cent, of 



NEEDS TO BE MET 47 

them. But even if we do not know the future as regards 
particular individuals, we do know it in large measure 
of collected groups, in the statistical sense — we know 
of probable numerical ratios and percentages; hence, 
any refusal on our part to provide opportunities into 
which individuals will fit as well as may be on the ini- 
tiative of themselves or their parents, with perhaps our ad- 
vice, is wasteful, inefficient, and essentially undemocratic. 

There is a certain small percentage of our pupils 
who, by virtue of their probable future opportunities for 
usefulness and self-gratification, ought to have early op- 
portunity to study a foreign language — German, French, 
Portuguese, Russian or Japanese. Here again, at the 
age of twelve we may not be able to select just the persons 
who should be advised to do this; but if the opportunities 
are provided, and if parents are fully advised as to the 
conditions, requirements, and probable fruits of this 
work, and if admission to it is restricted to those who 
have shown superior ability in the vernacular, choices will 
be right perhaps 50 or 70 per cent, of the time. 

It is assumed here, of course, that no vocational train- 
ing as such will be given in the junior high school. That 
will come later and will naturally require a large degree of 
specialization — in a city the establishment of even hun- 
dreds of different and unlike specific vocational schools 
to prepare for the hundreds of separate commercial, 
industrial and domestic occupations into which modern 
life is divided. 

But in the junior high school large oppor- 
tunities should be given for practical arts training, 
which, while not vocational in its outcome, may help 
towards vocation-finding, and will certainly give in- 
sight into the ideals and social significance of occupational 
life, if properly directed. 



48 READJUSTMENTS OF SCHOOLS 

To be of real service, however, practical arts educa- 
tion (industrial arts, agricultural arts, household arts, 
nautical arts, and commercial arts are all included under 
this head) must be diversified according to the funda- 
mental interests of children ; and the spirit in which each 
type of work is to be approached should be that of the 
amateur. Courses should be very flexible. A pupil enter- 
ing printing for the first time, for example!, should have 
the option of several simple introductory projects; after 
he has given reasonable attention to any one he should, if 
he wishes, be permitted to take up projects in a totally un- 
related field — e.g., gardening. 

Hence the need of the flexible course of study 
which only the junior high-school type of organization 
can provide. 

Let us repeat : The proposed junior high-school type 
of school organization is an administrative means — a 
necessary means — to' certain essential forms oif improve- 
ment of the education of young people from twelve to 
fifteen years of age. 

4. UNLIKE OBJECTIVES IN CURRICULA 

Every specific subject or even phase of subject of 
school work should, of course, be taught with certain 
conscious ends or objectives in view. These objectives 
or goals determining the teachers' aims are but illy defined 
at present, especially where the education of children from 
twelve to eighteen is concerned, but we may expect them 
to be more fully analyzed and stated in the near future, 
as educational processes become more scientifically cor- 
related between social and individual needs on the one 
hand, and individual powers and possibilities on the other. 
But in the light of present experience, it seems highly 



UNLIKE OBJECTIVES IN CURRICULA 49 

desirable to classify the objectives of the education that 
is adapted to children of from 12 to 14 years of age into 
at least two* groups according to the presence or absence 
in each study or phase of study, of certain fundamental 
characteristics. A few concrete cases will make 
this clear. 

* The objects to be attained in teaching a pupil to spell, 
for example, differ essentially from the objects to be 
attained through having the same pupil listen to a good 
musical recital or witness a dramatic performance. It 
is unfortunate that educational psychologists have not 
given more attention to the fundamentally unlike charac- 
ter of the learning processes here contrasted. In teaching 
spelling the outcome expected on the part of the pupil 
is a certain quite definite and easily recognized ability to 
do, to execute, to express in action, and the learning 
process cannot be terminated economically until this end 
is achieved. On the other hand, the learning achieved in 
hearing a recital or witnessing a dramatic performance 
(and we are agreed that some form of learning is thus 
achieved) can be subjected to no profitable test of expres- 
sion, of doing. We expect absorption, assimilation, 
growth, as results, but the final outcome is so remote 
from the original stimulus that we do not, ordinarily, 
seek to trace connections. 

For the sake of convenient classification, let us call 
the first type of learning the alpha type, and the second 
the beta type. Let us repeat that the conspicuous result 
expected in the case of the alpha type is ability to do, to 
express in action, while the most tangible result expected 
in the case of the beta type is appreciation or, in one 
sense of the word, interest. 

In the seventh and eighth grades, it is probably in 
4 



5o READJUSTMENTS OF SCHOOLS 

accordance with sound pedagogy so to teach arithmetic, 
penmanship, composition, spelling, and, presumably, 
grammar that these subjects should properly fall in the 
alpha class. On the other hand, literature, science, and 
civics, are, or doubtless ought to be, so* taught as properly 
to belong to the beta class. 

History, geography, music!, art and practical arts 
seem to be composite. It is manifestly important, for 
example, that certain phases of history and geography 
should be so definitely taught that the resulting fixed 
knowledge becomes as available and inerrant as should 
be knowledge of the multiplication table. But it is intol- 
erable that all geography and history as organized for 
children from twelve to fourteen years of age should be 
so taught. Most of the supplemental material used, and 
indeed much of the contents of the te*xt-books in current 
use, also, should be read, talked over, and the resulting 
impressions assimilated, but no fixed and instantly usable 
knowledge need be expected in these cases. Hence the 
proper organization of these subjects should involve a 
conscious and definite differentiation between alpha and 
beta portions teaching units or phases. 

It is difficult to 1 determine the effect of the differen- 
tiations here proposed on music and drawing (or art) 
because the purposes of these subjects in elementary edu- 
cation are, as yet, so imperfectly defined. It is probable 
that both subjects are now composite, and that in the 
interest of effective teaching they should be differentiated 
into alpha and beta phases or teaching units. There is 
much discussion at present of the teaching of music for 
the purpose of developing musical appreciation. Picture 
study has a place in some schools for a similar purpose. 
Clearly these are beta phases of these subjects. But it is 



UNLIKE OBJECTIVES IN CURRICULA 51 

also probably desirable that some children should be 
taught to execute music — that is, to read musical notation 
accurately, to sing, or to play. These are clearly alpha 
phases. Perhaps, also, upper-grade pupils should be given 
definite drill in drawing as an art of expression — also 
an alpha phase. 

Now the distinction here made is of fundamental im- 
portance in any discussion of flexible courses, or elective 
systems, because of the probability that the right and 
expediency on the part of the school of prescribing studies 
or phases of studies applies with far greater force to the 
alpha group than to the beta group. For one thing, the 
processes of learning in the alpha group are much more 
arduous, as a rule, than in the beta group; but in the 
alpha group, at least for the elementary school, will be 
found many of the common intellectual tools of civilized 
society — the arts of oral and written expression, receptive 
(or silent) reading, definite knowledge of geographical 
and historical facts, simple principles of hygiene, gen- 
erally accepted rules of behavior, etc. On the other hand, 
learning in the beta group is easier, or should be, if needed 
adaptation is made for individual interests ; and in respect 
to appreciation studies generally, society can well afford to 
have and perhaps even to procure a large degree of vari- 
ability rather than of uniformity among its members. 
We should all spell alike and have in common a definite 
knowledge of some of the facts of American history; 
but it is of advantage rather than disadvantage that our 
people should vary greatly as to the fields or individual 
examples of literature, and of history, in which they 
find interest and satisfaction. 

It should, then, theoretically prove possible for us to 
enumerate all the desirable ends or objectives in the sys- 



52 READJUSTMENTS OF SCHOOLS 

tematic education of young people from twelve to fifteen 
years of age, and to classify them into the two divisions 
suggested above, according as the learning sought is spe- 
cific, definite, and instantly usable in active life, or as it 
results in appreciation, taste, modified sentiment, ideal, 
and undifferentiated background of knowledge (other- 
wise experience and intellectual nurture). 

5. POSSIBLE CURRICULA OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS 

In order to set clearly before ourselves, without un- 
necessary restrictions, the possibilities of flexibility in 
the school for children from twelve to fourteen years of 
age, let us assume a very large city school receiving only 
pupils who have completed sixth-grade work, and de- 
signed to retain these pupils for but two or three years. 
Let us assume further that the school possesses financial 
means sufficient to enable it to organize and offer any 
kind of instruction for which there is a substanial demand, 
and which in the judgment of the authorities it is wise 
to offer to pupils of the stated years and qualifications. 
Let us furthermore assume, for sake of concrete descrip- 
tion, that the work is offered as units, a unit consisting of 
the equivalent of five weekly periods of sixty minutes 
each, extending through twelve weeks, to cover both 
instruction and recitation, and any other form of ex- 
clusive claim on the attention and energy of the pupil 
of average power for the sixty minutes. Theoretically, 
then, in view of recent progress in enriching elementary 
school curricula and in urging desirable new forms of 
instruction and training, the following subject courses 
might profitably be offered in grades seven and eight 
in such a school, the alpha and beta units being sep- 
arately indicated : 



POSSIBLE CURRICULA 



S3 



(Figures at left refer to explanatory notes at end of section.) 



(i) 



Name of Subject 


Alpha 
Units 


Beta 
Units 


English Expression : 






(2) Oral Expression 


6 




(3) Written Expression 


6 




(4) Grammar 


3 




(5) Word Analysis 


1 




(6) Spelling 


1 or 2 




(7) Penmanship 


1 or 2 




(8) Alphabet 


1 




(9) Silent Reading 


1 or 2 




General History 




6 


American History 


3 


3 or 6 


Community Civics 


1 


2 


literature 


1 


5 


General Moving Pictures 




3 


Music, Individual Vocal 


3 




Music, Chorus 


1 




Music, Piano 


3 




Music, Appreciation 




3 


Music, Band 


1 




Drawing, Representative 


2 




Art, Appreciation 




3 or 6 


Geography 


1 or 2 


2 or 4 


Science, General 


1 


2 or 5 


French 


3 or 6 




German 


3 or 6 




Spanish 


3 or 6 




Latin 


1 or 2 


2 or 4 


Industrial Arts 




3 or 6 


Agricultural Arts 




3 or 6 


Commercial Arts 




3 or 6 


Household Arts 




3 or 6 


Arithmetic, Commercial 


3 or 6 




Arithmetic, Industrial 


3 or 6 




Arithmetic, Home 


3 




Arithmetic, Geometry and Algebra 


3 or 6 




Hygiene 


1 or 2 


2 or 4 


Physical Training 


1 or 2 


5 or 4 


Vocational Guidance 




3 or 6 



(10 

(11 
(12 

(13 
(14 
(15 
(16 

(17 

(18 

(19 

(20 
(21 
(22 

(23 
(24 

(25 
(26 

(27 
(28 

(29 
(30 
(31 
(32 
(33 
(34 
(35 

(36 

(37 

(38 

58 or 88 52 or 82 

(1) To include all general studies designed to give greater power 
in the use of the vernacular, oral and written. 

(2) Including reading aloud, " speaking," correct use of voice, 
"oral composition" (or sustained delivery to audience), debate, cor- 
rect usage, etc., all from standpoint of effort to secure defi- 
nite attainments. 

(3) Composition, letter writing, correct usage in writing, etc. 



54 READJUSTMENTS OP SCHOOLS 

(4) Systematic analysis, with correction of personal solecisms. 

(5) Origin and structure of common words. 

(6) Chiefly to meet individual needs. Good spellers excused. 

(7) Chiefly to meet individual needs. Good writers excused. 

(8) Drill in alphabet, to produce readiness in use of indexes, 
dictionaries, etc. 

(9) Drill in technique. The subject not clearly defined as yet, 
but evidence exists that it is very important. 

(10) A general reading and lecture course — no drill. 

(11) Selection of special details and fundamental generalization 
for drill for alpha units; general and interesting phases of subject 
as beta units. 

(12) To include a small amount of definitely organized knowl- 
edge as alpha units. Beta units to cover thrift, reading of sanitation, 
practice voting, school self-government, readings, visits, etc. 

(13) Close analytical study of one or two selections, and certain 
central facts of literature, under alpha units. Beta units to include 
home reading, library, etc., but no requirement as to uniformity of 
material for all pupils. Individual choices, subject to approval 
of instructor. 

(14) That is, not definitely correlated with other subjects, and 
designed chiefly to enhance discriminative appreciation of moving 
pictures as a meansi of education and diversion. 

(15) Drill for pupils having marked capacity to profit from 
such study. 

(16) Selected group desiring drill. 

(17) For selected pupils desiring definite training. 

(18) All available forms of music offered to all desiring 
such training. 

(19) Selected group desiring definite training. 

(20) A general course; additional specialized work in prac- 
tical arts. 

(21) Plastic and decorative, and in part correlated with prac- 
tical arts, but should include pictures, room decoration, architecture, 
advertising illustration, and moving pictures. 

(22) Separation of formal or drill phases from appreciative 
phase, preserving correlation, by means of specific " teaching units " 
for both alpha and beta phases. 

(23) Largely interpretive of scientific aspects of surroundings. 
(24 to 26) To produce mastery of spoken or of written language, 

according to predetermined aims. 

(27) For drill in part. Subject could be reorganized to give 
insight and appreciation (beta units) in part. 

(28) Miscellaneous shop experience on projects from wide range 
of industries, including reading about the industries, and other means 
of enriching experience. Projects from textile, printing, metal 
working, wood working, food packing, transportation and other 
industries. Amateur standards of achievement, not " professional." 

(29) Including gardening, poultry raising, correlated reading, etc. 

(30) Typewriting, elementary bookkeeping, commercial penman- 



PRESCRIPTIONS VS. ELECTIVES 55 

ship, commercial readings, visits to commercial establishments, etc. 
Much of it on practical project basis. 

(31) Primarily to build on home experience and to enhance 
appreciation. 

(32 to 34) To be definitely practical subjects, correlated with 
practical arts courses. 

(35) Recommended for pupils expecting to enter high school 
and, later, college. 

(36) To include certain alpha phases for definite knowledge 
and practice — teeth, posture, etc. — and others (beta) for insight 
and wide appreciation. 

(37) Some definite physical training to cure defects or to pre- 
vent apprehended defects (alpha units). Games, "boy scout" 
activities, miscellaneous developmental play, athletics, etc., for 
beta units. 

(38) Readings, individual conferences, lectures. 

6. PRESCRIPTIONS VS. ELECTIVES 

The foregoing idealized curriculm shows clearly that 
there is even now available for possible use in courses of 
study for the junior high or intermediate school many 
times as much material as any one pupil can compass. 
Common experience teaches that hardly any subject is 
included above which cannot be " used " in some educa- 
tional way, and to the interest and advantage certainly of 
individuals and even of groups of pupils. But there are 
not many of these units that can reasonably be regarded 
as essential to all pupils alike, and which therefore 
should be universally prescribed as positive require- 
ments. Equally, there are few that any pupil should be 
prohibited from taking if he wishes — here called 
negative prescription. 

But what shall be the bases of these positive and nega- 
tive prescriptions? They certainly include at least the 
following: (a) the limitations imposed by the varying 
native capacities of pupils; (b) the requirement that each 
pupil, even against his own desire and that of his parents, 
shall, as a part of his right to a protected childhood and 
as a logical accompaniment of compulsory school attend- 



56 READJUSTMENTS OF SCHOOLS 

ance, be required to receive the instruction and training 
that will probably be necessary or greatly advantageous to 
him in later life; and (c) the right of society to have 
each person fitted as far as may be to take his part as 
citizen, parent, soldier, and worker in a world where all 
human activities are increasingly socialized and cor- 
porate in character. 

No argument is required to prove that children of 
twelve to fourteen years of age vary greatly as to natural 
capacity. Some are so talented that they can carry a 
large program of studies with ease and profit. Others 
are fortunate if they can, only at best, meet minimum 
requirements. Some are born with natural gifts for 
music, foreign language, and drawing. These pupils 
can master their favorite subjects with an ease not pos- 
sible to children less gifted in these directions. It is the 
observation of every teacher that some children have 
inferior natural capacity for arithmetic and other forms 
of mathematics, while others find only slight difficulty in 
these subjects, even in portions where rigorous abstract 
thinking is required. These natural limitations will there- 
fore be influential in determining what large numbers of 
pupils will, or will not, be allowed to take. 

On the other hand, the rights of the child, irrespective 
of his own desires in early youth or those of his guardians, 
to obtain or be given the education essential to a fair 
start in life are of paramount importance. This right 
applies not only as regards those minimum attainments in 
reading, writing, spelling, and number which are to be 
expected of all normal children ; it should include also the 
requirement that children, manifestly talented in certain 
directions, shall be obliged at a suitable age to begin 
studies, such as foreign language, that may later, as far 
as can reasonably be foreseen, prove essential in the 



PRESCRIPTIONS VS. ELECTIVES 57 

careers and positions of personal influence towards which 
their native powers seem to direct them. 

Finally, no one will dispute the obligation on the part 
of society to require all persons to acquire in childhood 
at least the minimum of knowledge and training which is 
essential to their successful participation in corporate life. 
Not only are the arts of expression to be included here, 
along with moral training, knowledge of civic facts and 
responsibilities, and everyday arithmetic; eventually each 
person may be required to submit to training for a voca- 
tion, and for the work of the soldier. Society must give 
these kinds of education as a means of self-preservation. 

But, when an extensive curriculum of subject courses 
is offered in a school, the burden of proof rests on the 
school to establish a strong presumption as to the neces- 
sity of the units which are prescribed, whether for all 
or for those electing stated courses. Subject to the re- 
quirement that the pupil and his parents provide for the 
full use of the pupil's time, the learner should be 
free to elect his own program of studies, unless the 
school authorities can definitely establish the desir- 
ability of prescription. 

Clearly, then, educators charged with organizing and 
administering education for persons from twelve to 
fifteen years of age are, or soon will be, confronted by 
conditions which constitute, if the distorted figure may be 
permitted, a three-horned dilemma: (a) Possible educa- 
tional offerings (or opportunities for giving particular 
kinds of instruction and training) are becoming many 
fold more numerous than can be taken by any one indi- 
vidual or group of individuals presenting like character- 
istics; (b) the native capacities of pupils or of distinctive 
possible groups of pupils vary greatly; and (c) some sub- 
jects or phases of subjects, as yet not fully determined or 



58 READJUSTMENTS OF SCHOOLS 

defined, should in some cases be prescribed for all and in 
other cases for all having stated forms of ability or prob- 
able future field of usefulness. How shall the admin- 
istrator proceed under these conditions? Shall he 
disregard, as he has heretofore done, the first and second 
considerations, and insist on a limited curriculum of 
prescribed studies for all, thus ignoring opportunities for 
varied training and instruction? Shall he include in his 
curricula all possible studies, but segregate them in rigid 
courses, so that each shall constitute a fixed system in 
itself, like a railroad route, of such a character that the 
pupil, once en route, cannot cross to another line, and 
can only change his route of travel by going back to the 
starting point again? Or shall he simply organize the 
school offerings into one long series and allow the pupil 
to range and choose ad libitum? Manifestly, each of 
these courses is open to objection. They are all psy- 
chologically unsound. 

In reality, each method is desirable and feasible as to 
certain elements or types of studies in the curriculum. 
Some studies or subject courses should be prescribed for 
all pupils; some should be prescribed only as component 
elements of definite courses, and therefore to be required 
only of learners electing such courses, while, possibly, 
elective to< others; and some should be freely elective to 
all. But it is here contended again that as regards all 
prescribed work, whether generally prescribed, or pre- 
scribed for those electing specified courses, a heavy burden 
rests upon the authorities making the prescriptions to' 
establish the presumption that it is better that these pre- 
scriptions should thus be made than that the pupil, sub- 
ject to reasonable supervision from home and school, and 
to the general requirement that he must employ all of his 



PRESCRIPTIONS VS. ELECTIVES 59 

school time profitably, shall freely elect his own course 
(subject, also, of course, to the limitations imposed by 
the necessities of efficient and economical school admin- 
istration). Here we are, of course, at once involved in 
the old debate as to the merits and demerits of the elec- 
tive system and the capacities of learners wisely to use 
such a system. 

All of us have read (and perhaps participated in) 
lengthy discussions as to the elective system in college and 
school. We were long ago told that learners — whether 
college juniors or high-school freshmen — were not old 
enough or wise enough or earnest enough to choose their 
own studies to advantage. They would usually choose 
" snap " courses. Their programs, under freedom of 
election, would consist of uncoordinated subject courses, 
the resulting learning would be fragmentary, discursive, 
and unsubstantial. " Easy instructors " would be in 
favor, real efficiency would disappear, and chaos 
would prevail. 

It is a fact that in nearly all debate as to the elective 
system, its opponents have had the stronger arguments. 
The proponents, while usually able eventually to win the 
day in action because of favoring circumstances, have 
never, it would seem, formulated the most fundamental 
and strongest arguments in favor of their position. 

It must surely be admitted that the pupil, whether in 
seventh, or tenth, or fifteenth (college junior) grade, is 
but poorly equipped to make so momentous a choice as 
that involved in electing the studies he will henceforth 
pursue. Almost equally, after college graduation, he 
will be but poorly prepared to elect his profession, his 
place of future work, his physician, his political party, a 
woman to be his wife. Here we express, of course, only 



6o READJUSTMENTS OF SCHOOLS 

an admission that our system of education includes as yet 
hardly any provision for adequately guiding the indi- 
vidual in the matter of many, if not all, of the important 
decisions he must make in life. 

For, if we ask what is the alternative to free election 
of studies, even, let us say, in the college period of edu- 
cation, we are confronted by the fact that except in rare 
instances there exists as yet no organized procedure 
whereby the individual, with his limitations of capacity 
and opportunity, his interests, and his obligations to 
society, can be guided into making choices that best meet 
or serve his needs. The opponents of election have prob- 
ably never asserted that they were ready to provide the 
personal attention and scientific insight that would be 
required adequately to have prescribed for the individual 
student on the basis of sound diagnosis the best program 
of studies for him. It is certain that in college and sec- 
ondary school this could not be done for the sufficient rea- 
son that never yet have educators in these institutions 
accomplished anything substantial in the way of capacity 
for making scientific diagnosis of the capacities, limita- 
tions, and probable opportunities of individual learners. 

Furthermore, even assuming that such diagnosis were 
possible at any period, the prepossessions of the advocates 
of rigid courses — or, usually, of one rigid course — would 
probably have prevented them from studying the variant 
qualities of the minds of their students, again for the 
sufficient reason that the all-important consideration, as 
teachers have believed, was the subject to be taught — 
Latin, algebra, Greek, rhetoric, logic, physics, etc. — and 
not at all the characteristics of the individual learner. 

In other words, the historical alternative to free elec- 
tion, at least of courses, if not subjects, has been rigid 



PRESCRIPTIONS VS. ELECTIVES 61 

prescription as determined by inflexible tradition or cus- 
tom or educational theory. The variability of learners 
as to capacities, interests, and needs has been ignored. 
Traditions and dogmas as to the superior or even unique 
educational values of certain ancient subjects of study 
have governed. The newer subjects were intrinsically 
inferior, if not worthless, educationally, hence any choice 
of them has been regarded as necessarily bad. The 
thought that election of studies is bad has always been 
fathered by the wish that it should prove bad from the 
standpoint of the opponent whose favorite studies might 
not be elected. 

The various attempts heretofore made to modify, on 
the one hand, the rigidity of the inflexible one-course 
curriculum, and, on the other, to prevent the wasteful pos- 
sibilities of completely free election, have constituted 
admissions that adjustments of courses and studies, 
based partly upon the capacities of learners, and partly 
upon their varying needs, are highly desirable and prob- 
ably feasible. But it is a fact that no satisfactory state- 
ment oif the principles which would guide in the matter 
has, as yet, been formulated. There is still too often the 
naive assumption that the " system " — that is, the col- 
lection of educational dogmas and traditions as expressed 
by unprogressive educators, usually through conference 
or committee edict — knows best what the " student " 
needs and should have. This is not an individual student, 
James Ferguson, for example, but an abstract human 
being, an educational John Doe, who has met entrance 
requirements and who is probably assumed to be taking 
his class attendance in the same spirit that he would a 
necessary, though distasteful, sentence to a hospital. 

It is still too early, perhaps, to formulate the under- 



62 READJUSTMENTS OF SCHOOLS 

lying principles which should govern flexibility of cur- 
ricula and courses; but it is possible even now to apply 
to the future junior high-school curriculum the best 
results of contemporary theory and practice as to this 
educational problem in secondary school and college. 

7. CONTROLLING PRINCIPLES OF FLEXIBILITY IN JUNIOR 

HIGH SCHOOLS 

If we take, for example, the entire range of subject 
courses that it is possible to* offer in the junior high school, 
it is clear that all cannot be regarded as being on the same 
footing from the standpoint either of election or pre- 
scription. Some are essential to all, many essential to 
none. Some are essential in certain courses, others essen- 
tial to no* particular course. On the other hand, there are 
many that may well be regarded as educational luxuries 
— highly pleasurable to< those who can afford them and 
surely not injurious to any who can take them without 
detriment to their more necessary work. But what are 
the subject-courses that belong in those respective cate- 
gories? It is difficult for us to reach sound conclusions 
here because our prepossessions are at present so much 
stronger and more clearly defined than are any available 
findings based on scientific study. In the idealized cur- 
riculum for a junior high school given above there are 
found from fifty-eight to< eighty-eight alpha units (or 
subject courses to> be taught with the aim of producing 
power to do), and from fifty-two to eighty-two beta units 
(or subject courses in which appreciation is a controlling 
purpose). No one average pupil, probably, could take 
in two years more than thirty of the total one hundred 
and forty units supposed to be offered. A slow pupil 
could take perhaps not to exceed twenty, while an excep- 



CONTROLLING PRINCIPLES 63 

tionally strong pupil could take forty. What require- 
ments shall we make, what advice offer, and what lib- 
erty allow, to our junior high-school pupil confronted by 
the above curriculum? 

First, let us repeat that our attitude towards the alpha 
units should not be the same as that towards the beta 
units. If the beta units are taught (or, better word, 
offered) with due regard to appropriate pedagogical prin- 
ciples, we may experience difficulty in keeping pupils 
from them, or at least some of them. They should prove 
inherently interesting to children as do play, the " movies/' 
sports, and certain kinds of fiction, or as the opera, fic- 
tion, travel and association prove attractive to adults. 
On the other hand, the alpha units present, in the main, 
the characteristics of the harder work of the world. The 
interest with which they are pursued must often be a 
derived interest — derived in some cases, even, from fear 
of punishment, or fear of forfeiture of desired approval, 
or from love of gain or approval. Hence it can at the out- 
set be asserted that prescription will be much more neces- 
sary in the case of the alpha than of the beta units. 

Let us assume that a careful study of the capacities of 
average children of twelve to* fourteen years of age, 
coupled with an equally careful study of the objectives, 
individual and social, which should be realized through 
their education, shows that it is expedient and desirable 
that their two-year programs could and should include 
substantially fifteen alpha units and fifteen beta units. 
We might then establish the following rules to govern the 
making of individual courses: 

s (a) Any pupil deficient as to spelling, writing, and 
silent reading shall be required to> take these alpha subjects. 

( b) Every pupil shall elect four alpha units in English 
expression, in addition to those required under (a). 



64 READJUSTMENTS OF SCHOOLS 

(c) Every pupil shall elect at least six units designed 
to provide a definite course in one of the following fields, 
— (a) foreign language and mathematics; (b) commer- 
cial arts; (c) industrial arts (boys) ; (d) household arts 
(girls) ; (e) agricultural arts. 

(d) No pupil shall have fewer than fifteen or more 
than twenty alpha units. 

(e) Every pupil shall elect at least ten beta units. 



CHAPTER III 

READJUSTMENTS OF CURRICULA: HIGH 
SCHOOLS AND VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS 

I. CERTAIN FUNDAMENTAL DISTINCTIONS 

As measured in terms of public interest and support, 
secondary education has been, during the last three dec- 
ades, very dynamic. As measured in terms of adapta- 
tions of curricula to social needs, improvements in methods 
of teaching, and adequate training of teachers, the reverse 
seems largely true. Attendance in high schools has in- 
creased three times faster than population. Public money 
has been generously supplied for buildings and equip- 
ment. Parents have widely exhibited desires to have their 
children share in some of the supposed advantages of 
high-school education. But curricula have changed little 
in the last thirty years. Methods of teaching the stand- 
ardized subjects have advanced but slightly. Few indeed 
of the 50,000 high-school teachers of the United States 
can, as yet, be said to have been professionally trained 
for their work. 

But changes, perhaps of a sweeping character, are 
impending. ^Demands for school-supplied vocational edu- 
cation to supplement general education have brought com- 
plications, some upsetting of traditions and perhaps some 
new light. The psychologists have disturbed our inherited 
faiths in certain panaceas of mental, moral and perhaps 
physical, discipline. 

As a means of setting forth compactly the writer's 
present tentatively held convictions as to probable early 
5 65 



66 READJUSTMENTS OF CURRICULA 

developments, the following brief of conclusions and 
theses is submitted: 

It is of the utmost importance to American education 
at the present time that there be established and docu- 
mented by competent authorities the necessary distinc- 
tions between vocational and general education as these 
affect the training and instruction of young people from 
twelve to eighteen or even twenty years of age. 

1. Our secondary schools have always been assumed, 
in a vague and theoretical sense, to discharge some func- 
tions of vocational education. Superficial observers and 
thinkers have been confirmed in their beliefs that this was 
so by the observed fact that these schools, as selective 
agencies, have brought to the front and into a spirit of 
self-confidence those whose native abilities and favoring 
extra-school environment have predestined them to 
choose, and to succeed in, the best vocations and eventually 
to win to leadership in them. 

But in no true sense have secondary schools of gen- 
eral education (Latin schools, academies, general high 
schools) ever been vocational schools. Their controlling 
aims have obviously lain in the fields of general or liberal 
education (including mental training), however inade- 
quately they may have realized these aims. Even so- 
called commercial departments, measured in terms of time 
given and results achieved, have rarely been more than 
20 per cent, solutions of vocational education; while in 
agricultural, home economics, and even manual training 
departments, genuinely vocational ingredients have rarely 
exceeded 10 per cent, and have often fallen to a very 
sobriety-insuring 2 or 3 per cent. 

2. But the time has arrived when secondary education 
(as a whole — vocational and non-vocational) should be- 
come in reality more democratic, more functional, and 



CERTAIN FUNDAMENTAL DISTINCTIONS 67 

therefore more purposive and definite. A total scheme 
of direct education for youths from twelve to eighteen 
should include many and varied opportunities for general 
(physical, cultural, social) or liberal (cultural and social) 
education, as well as for vocational education. But there 
should be no confusion in the minds of educators, parents, 
employers or pupils as to which is which. Such confusion 
now exists in great measure and is often induced, aggra- 
vated, or at least permitted by some selfish, and by some 
misguided, educators. Criticism of make-believe or gold- 
brick vocational education is justified less, if anything, on 
the grounds that such education is ineffective and mis- 
leading as vocational training, than because its presence 
and the interest it awakens actually prevent the discovery 
and application of means of genuine liberal education. 

3. Vocational education in and through schools (in 
each case specially adapted to the requirements of the 
occupation for which preparation is being given) we are 
clearly destined to have in endless varieties during the next 
few years. Most forms of that vocational education 
{e.g., locomotive engineering, shoemaking, cooking, farm- 
ing, lumbering, seafaring, salesmanship, homemaking) 
cannot be carried on in ordinary school buildings (al- 
though some minor related technical or social studies can 
be brought to class rooms), nor through forms of school 
organization (equipment, faculties, supervision) as cus- 
tomarily designed for general education. Hence, in gen- 
eral, it would prove desirable for youths to stay as long 
as practicable in full-time schools designed for general 
education and then (except for continuation-school at- 
tendance) to turn sharply into full-time vocations or, 
preferably, into full-time vocational schools, or into 
schemes whereby half-time is spent in productive wage- 
earning work in the vocation and half-time in a vocational 



68 READJUSTMENTS OF CURRICULA 

school of closely related subjects. For some meagerly 
endowed or supported unfortunates, this transition from 
the full-time school of general education may have to 
take place as early as fourteen years of age; for other 
persons, better favored, it will normally be at sixteen; 
for still others at eighteen; and for an elite minority at 
twenty or twenty-two. For all vocational workers, of 
course, young or old, a portion of non-working time — the 
required continuation school hours of Pennsylvania, even- 
ing hours, holidays, vacations — should be given to fur- 
therance, with or without public aid, of cultural and civic 
powers and appreciations during as many years of early 
participation in vocations or vocational education as may 
prove practicable. 

2. OBJECTIVES OF " GENERAL " CURRICULA 

The general or ordinary high school, as well as the 
coming junior school or junior high school, should have 
as its primary aims physical, cultural and civic education. 
These schools should make no attempt to prepare for spe- 
cific vocations. But vocational guidance and various of 
the practical arts, may legitimately be introduced when it 
is evident that these contribute better than anything else to 
the realization of some of the legitimate and defined ends 
of physical and liberal (cultural and social) education. 
(For the rest of this paper the term " general education " 
will be used, in contradistinction to vocational education, 
to include physical, cultural (in the more personal sense) 
and social (civic as well as moral— that is " large group " 
as well as " small group ") education. The term " liberal 
education " will include cultural and social education only. 
The term " high school " will include junior high schools 
but exclude vocational schools.) 

A large proportion of the offerings of typical Amer- 



OBJECTIVES OF "GENERAL" CURRICULA 69 

ican high schools now contribute little of substantial value 
to any phase of general education. In other words, judged 
by reasonable standards, these schools are only from 10 to 
50 per cent, efficient. For a few of their pupils, they may, 
of course, realize more valuable results. For example, 
for pupils who leave after one year of English, algebra, 
French and ancient history, the high school may be only 
5 per cent, efficient ; while for ^pupils who, endowed with 
excellent intellectual interests and stirred to make good 
records, go to college, it may be 50 or even 80 per 
cent, efficient. 

1. The standards upon which the foregoing crude 
estimates are based, are, of course, for the present per- 
sonal and largely subjective. But it is believed that if we 
analyze the qualities of those men and women of thirty to 
forty years of age who, by consensus of judgment of com- 
petent observers are persons of "good " personal culture 
and citizenship, we shall discover in them many civic and 
cultural powers and capacities, self-produced, which 
schools of liberal education could and should produce in 
many, but which they now seldom, if ever, develop. 

2. Furthermore, it is obvious that in the case of 
many, if not most, high-school pupils a considerable num- 
ber of studies to which they devote the most effort prol> 
ably do not " function " at all along the lines properly 
designated as " liberal education." Of what cultural or 
civic value for girls is most algebra, as now studied? 
Latin ? French ? Ancient history, or even medieval and 
modern history? Physics? Classical English literature? 
On the basis of what tokens of enduring interests, cultural 
ideals, well-informed minds, elevated tastes,, persisting 
devotion to the " enterprise of learning," can it be con- 
tended that any of these studies are " functional " for all 
or some boys? 



7 o READJUSTMENTS OF CURRICULA 

3. IMPROVING LIBERAL EDUCATION 

Any effective revision of high-school studies for 
purposes of effecting better liberal education should, 
the present writer contends, involve acceptance of 
these principles : 

(a) The abandonment of mental discipline as a pri- 
mary aim in or through any study. 

(b) Recognition that certain subjects or well-defined 
portions of traditional subjects (hereafter called " B 
class " subjects) should be utilized as educational means 
primarily because of their stimulus to, or enrichment of, 
growth or development of a relatively informal and 
therefore, in one sense of the word, " natural " (as op- 
posed to strictly guided, cultivated or artificial) character. 

(c) Recognition that certain other subjects or parts 
of subjects (hereafter called " A class " subjects) should 
lead very directly to powers and capacities, known to be 
of use to the individual in adult life, or to the society 
of which he shall be a part. 

(d) Recognition that, whereas the primarily valuable 
objectives of vocational education are in genejal to be 
found in powers of production of valuable goods or 
wealth, the true objectives of liberal education are to be 
found primarily in improved capacities for utilization. 

1. Mental disciplines of endless specific varieties (in 
any comprehensive and genuine sense " discipline of ' the ' 
mind," or even " training of ' the ' memory," " training of 
1 the ' imagination," " training of ' the ' attention " are 
largely mystical and illusory objectives) may- be accom- 
plished through school education, but chiefly as by- 
products of the pursuit of ends otherwise primarily valu- 
able. The " generalization of these disciplines " into 
principles and ideals is a process the methods of which 



IMPROVING LIBERAL EDUCATION 71 

seem to be largely unknown as yet. As supplemental, 
school subjects in mental science should be included — 
studies of mental processes and results (simplified, con- 
crete, " case " psychology, as little subjective and as 
greatly objective as practicable). 

2. " B class " studies, subjects or pursuits are those 
primarily which we follow, and to the degrees only which 
we follow them, because of innate or easily stimulated de- 
sire. Physical play of children,, the exercise of natural 
curiosity, games and sports, moving pictures, interesting 
fiction, craft pursuits, hunting, travel, social singing, ac- 
counts O'f adventure, music sought after — these are a few 
examples among children and adults. Few would now 
contend that these are not educative ; but it is only in the 
lower grades that we have frankly and honestly included 
them among the ends that schools should value and seek 
to promote: 

But the concrete outcomes of these interests and pur- 
suits are rarely visible. When we adults read good 
novels we can rarely detect specific increments of power 
or capacity resulting from our enjoyable and play-like 
pursuit of these interests; nevertheless, we are satisfied 
that we have been enriched and bettered thereby, just as 
we feel that travel or the sports of childhood usually con- 
tribute to physical, moral and mental growth, develops 
ment, fulfilment, self-realization. 

3. " A class " subjects or pursuits are those made 
necessary by the conditions of civilized life. The powers 
required in them may be very alien to our " natural " or 
more nearly instinctive life, may be very " artificial," in 
fact — the artificial requirements of the culture, moral 
behavior, and vocational proficiency imposed by civiliza- 
tion. Handwriting, spelling, foreign language (as learned 
by mature persons), nearly all high-grade vocations, the 



72 READJUSTMENTS OF CURRICULA 

rendering of good music, the products of physical, mili- 
tary and vocational drill when these are'" hard" — these 
are examples of A class subjects. 

The pursuit of A class subjects usually requires 
hard work. Should this hard work be imposed or induced 
unless the value of the product to the worker or his society 
is reasonably well known and certain of realization? 
Probably not. Time and energy are limited enough at 
best, and the world is full of " hard " things necessary 
or desirable to be learned which we now forego. This 
consideration gives point to the query as to why girls 
should be induced or required to work " hard " on mathe- 
matics or boys on Latin. Of course, no one assumes that 
it is intended that they should do this uselessly; but the 
usefulness of most of the required hard work in these sub- 
jects is not yet a matter of demonstration. 

4. The importance of some form of differentiation 
among the various subjects now making up curricula lies 
in the fact that if objectives are unlike, methods will neces- 
sarily be unlike also. It is obvious that, as regards B 
class subjects, very large flexibility is possible and that 
methods of approach and attack resemble more nearly 
those characteristics of play or amateur activities in the 
extra-school world ; while in the case of A class subjects, 
some, in very definite form, must be required of all, and 
others made the hard and inflexible conditions of admis- 
sion to vocations, higher types of schools, etc. The 
methods employed for the mastery of these must resemble 
those prevailing in the world of productive work. 

4. PROBABLE CHANGES IN CURRICULA 

The following changes in existing subjects are ex- 
pected to result as a consequence of the acceptance of the 
principles suggested above: 



PROBABLE CHANGES IN CURRICULA 73 

1. Mathematics for the first six grades, and, possibly, 
to a trifling extent in grades above should be an A class 
subject designed wholly and only to prepare the learner 
for utilization. It should be " consumers " mathematics, 
which must necessarily be unspecialized. But all ordinary 
mathematics above " consumers " mathematics should be 
offered only as vocational prerequisites or accompani- 
ments, strictly A class, and differentiated and specialized 
to the demonstrated requirements of the expected voca- 
tion for any given individual. Certain vocations may, of 
course, be prescribed under some social conditions — e.g., 
the temporary vocations of defending the flag — in which 
case, inevitably, the needed mathematics would be pre- 
scribed ; otherwise it would be as elective as are usually the 
choices of vocations. 

2. In the grades and as far as practicable throughout 
the secondary-school period should be available offerings 
of science on a B class basis. " General science " is trying 
to become that now — even though tradition tugs hard at 
the coat-tails of those who are seeking to bring it forward. 

But for youths from fifteen upward there should also 
be A class offerings of prevocational science, known to be 
functional in expected vocations — engineering, home- 
making, farming, machine shop practice, etc. Of course, 
school masters who' are worshippers of the " logical 
order " and of " mastery of principles " first, will not see 
any difference between prevocational sciences for machine- 
shop workers and for homemakers; but a wiser genera- 
tion may be expected soon to appear. 

3. English language studies will, with rare exceptions, 
be of the A class. Language acquisition as a part of 
growth (B class) is most active from one to six years 
of age. Further powers of speech — correctness, powers 



74 READJUSTMENTS OF CURRICULA 

for particular purposes — will come usually as results of 
drills, tasks imposed, all in pursuit of definitely foreseen 
and evaluated ends. 

Most forms of written language study will belong to 
the A class and conspicuously, of course, those taken 
towards vocational ends. 

4. The learning of a foreign language during tender 
years — from two to five at least — is naturally a B class 
subject. But in youth or maturity it will doubtless have 
to remain as A class work — to be undertaken seriously 
and to be pursued as " hard work " towards clearly defined 
ends of positive achievement. 

5. It may well be doubted whether English literature 
should ever be pursued as an A class subject. The blight 
on literature teaching now is the blight of formalism, of 
prescribed works, of unnaturally analytical methods. Let 
us throw English literature as an A class subject out of 
the high schools, and try to develop a B class subject in 
the same field. 

6. History and various social science studies should 
be merged, and for the resulting subjects two sets of ob- 
jectives should be developed — one in the field of cultural 
education and the other in the field of Social (and espe- 
cially civic) education. 

All of the offerings for cultural purposes will be of the 
B class. Many of the offerings, especially to the younger 
pupils, for civic purposes will also 1 be of the B class. A 
few offerings ("short unit courses") to older pupils — 
formal chronological courses in essentials of history, 
methods of using historical materials, courses in principles 
and facts of civics, economics, etc. — will properly be of 
the A class. 

7. Practical arts courses, especially for youths under 



ADMINISTRATION 75 

sixteen, will certainly be of the B class where in wide 
range of choice, flexibility of projects, and easy cultivation 
of interests, tastes, etc., will control. 

But all genuine vocational education will, from the 
start, be definite, very specific, hard, with clearly marked 
objectives, and characterized by rigid methods. Mani- 
festly its subjects of practice and study will usually be 
of the A class. f 

8. Some new subjects are required in secondary 
schools of liberal education. " Mental science," general 
in character and for appreciation chiefly, corresponding to 
" general nature science," is one of them. B class courses 
in art appreciation, current events, community civics, in- 
ternational relations, social behavior and various aspects 
of hygiene are greatly needed. 

5. ADMINISTRATION 

In administration of courses of liberal education in 
schools the following principles should prevail : 

1. Every pupil should be expected to give a portion 
of each school day (let us assume it to be eight hours in 
length) to " hard " intellectual work — which time, there- 
fore, should be devoted to A class subjects. Likewise, 
he should be expected to give part of each day to high- 
grade physical, intellectual or social play — athletics, fic- 
tion reading, visiting good theaters, practicing pleasant 
handicrafts, taking part in amateur theatricals, etc. He 
should be permitted as wide range as practicable and very 
free election among these B class subjects, and also within 
the materials of each. If he cannot make a full and suit- 
able schedule by election, he should be put into an " awk- 
ward squad " for A class drill for deficients. 

2. No pupil should be allowed to remain in a group 



76 READJUSTMENTS OF CURRICULA 

pursuing B class objectives unless he conform well to the 
requirements established on behalf of the group as regards 
spirit, cooperation, application, etc. Admission to a B 
class group or class should be regarded as a privilege. For 
misfits who cannot adapt themselves to these conditions 
" awkward squad " drill groups should be provided — as 
they are now in private schools for boys who do not elect 
any of the " going " lines of sports or athletics. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE HIGH SCHOOL OF TO-MORROW 

I. THE PRESENT SITUATION 

The American high school is a young giant, now pass- 
ing rapidly through his years of early adolescence. What 
will he be like, say, in the year 1925, when, one may 
expect, he shall have attained his majority? In what 
essential respects will he differ from the youth of to-day 
who has not yet found himself, in spite of his great physi- 
cal size, who is still closely tied to his mother's apron 
strings (for, in a way, the college has mothered him), and 
who, notwithstanding his occasional freakishness, is still 
bound largely by the customs and superstitions of the 
youth reared in the atmosphere of medievalism? 

In forecasting possible developments of secondary 
schools, let us keep in mind chiefly the urban or suburban 
community. The country high school, like its prototype, 
the country elementary school, is unavoidably for the 
present, the Cinderella of the secondary-school sisterhood. 
We all hope that the prince bearing gifts will sometime 
find the rural high school, but for the present we cannot 
even be certain that he is on the quest. During the next 
decade it is clearly in those communities where many 
people live not too far from each other that we may expect 
experimental changes in secondary education to be 
launched, and permanent modifications to become estab- 
lished. At the risk of seeming unjustifiable dogmatic, let 
us hazard guesses as to what some of these will be. 

The high school of to-day (as we personify it) thinks 
of its responsibilities chiefly in connection with the best 

77 



7$ THE HIGH SCHOOL OF TO-MORROW 

fourth or best third of the children of the community 
who have completed the eight-year elementary-school 
course and who are usually from fourteen to eighteen 
years of age. But, beginning with the segregation of 
children from twelve to fourteen years of age into the 
junior high school, we shall probably bring within the 
general scope of secondary education all schooling suited 
to youths from twelve to eighteen years of age, whether 
general or special, liberal or vocational. There is, in real- 
ity, little to distinguish secondary from elementary edu- 
cation in purpose or kind — the differences are chiefly in 
degree only. Most of the distinctions between elementary 
and secondary education , which we try to incorporate into 
educational theory are factitious and unhelpful. In the 
secondary school o*f 1925 we shall doubtless be teaching 
some children of even fourteen or fifteen years of age the 
rudiments of reading and writing and number, but, be- 
cause of their age, we shall minister to their educational 
needs in special classes in some type of secondary-school 
class, instead of placing them in lower schools with 
younger children. ^ 

The high school of to-day thinks of its certainly at- 
tainable purposes chiefly in terms of the mastery of certain 
forms of highly organized knowledge, and in strict 
accordance with certain traditional standards as to- what 
constitutes such mastery — capacity for verbal reproduc- 
tion, performance of definite exercises, etc. It also dreams 
freely of other purposes not so proximate, and of greater 
permanent significance — the training of mind, the en- 
nobling of character, the in-breathing or evoking of per- 
sistent cultural interests, the kindling of the civic sense 
and the like. But in large part these dreams now give us 
only castles in Spain. Like the enterprises of poor Colonel 
Sellers, the big aspirations which we cherish on behalf of 



ANTICIPATIONS 79 

our secondary schools sound well by the fireside or as the 
subject matter of after-dinner speeches; but in the cold 
light of day they guide us very little in the actual tasks 
planned or under way in the teaching of Latin, German, 
English, physics, ancient history, algebra, mechanical 
drawing, lathe-work, or commercial geography. 

2. ANTICIPATIONS 

By 1925, it can confidently be hoped, the minds which 
direct education will have detached from the entangle- 
ments of our contemporary civilization a thousand definite 
educational objectives, the realization of which will have 
demonstrable worth to society. It will be found that many 
of these can best be realized through the medium of some 
type of secondary school or class therein. In denning and 
giving comparative valuations to these objectives or pur- 
poses or goals we shall, of course, take account in due 
measure of the possible and the desired well-being of the 
individual as well as of the society of which he is a mem- 
ber; of the native powers, interests, and probable future 
opportunities of the learner; and of the by-education 
resulting from, or to be procured through, such social 
non-school agencies as the home, the church, the work- 
shop, community contact, and the like. 

Educational objectives worthy of a place in publicly 
supported secondary schools will have been found to be 
of many kinds. Some of these will center chiefly in the 
promotion of physical well-being — to be realized through 
the establishment of right ideals of health, strength, and 
endurance ; the imparting of needed instruction in hygiene 
and sanitation; and the training in habits of posture, 
activity, and restraint. We get glimpses of the possibil- 
ities in this direction even now, but they are only glimpses. 
What is the significance to the educational programs of 



80 THE HIGH SCHOOL OF TO-MORROW 

the future of the results on physique and health of the 
forced training and the exposure endured by the millions 
of recruits in the late war? How far are we yet from 
a realization of the cost to the physical womanhood of this 
country of our specialized nerve and brain drill in schools ? 

Again, some of our objectives will center definitely 
in cultivation of specific personal intellectual and aesthetic 
interests — the resources wherewith we enrich our leisure 
time, our individual lives. In view of their ostensible 
aims, the high schools of the present should be doing more 
along this line than is now actually the case. They should 
at least establish abiding cultural interests — appreciations, 
tastes, enthusiasms, even hobbies — in literature, science, 
foreign languages, and history. Surely the high school 
of 1925 will be doing this? Surely it will take the neces- 
sary means to insure that all those who have felt its 
influence will somewhere in the world's multifarious cul- 
tural possibilities find leads which may grow into vital 
personal interests of a high order, give rise to avocational 
activities, and entitle the possessor to rank with cultivated 
men in some field. In music, literature, social science, 
natural science, history, travel in foreign lands, the prac- 
tical arts suited to the amateur handicraftsman, politics, 
drama, the moving picture — in most, if not all, of these 
directions we may expect the school to* offer openings to 
be made available to each learner according to his lean- 
ings, his capacity, and his possibilities of largest 
self -development. 

A third class of objectives will be evolved in connec- 
tion with the direct and purposive development of young 
people toward the standards of civic habit, knowledge, 
ideal, and the resulting behavior which befits the member 
of the social group, the citizen of the state in the twentieth 
century. Call this form of education moral, civic, ethical, 



ANTICIPATIONS 81 

humane, religious, social — in greater or less degree, it is 
each and all of these — it is certain that in the complicated 
social life of the age upon which we have already entered 
we must have it in ever greater measure if we are to 
survive. It must include the formation of certain fine 
social habits and attitudes which the by-education of 
agencies other than the school has not given ; it must in- 
clude the giving of much of the social knowledge which 
is necessary to guide us aright in the jungle of modern 
social life; and it must be strong in the cultivation of a 
variety of right sentiments and ideals. But it must do 
much more than train (in the specific sense), inform, 
and inspire; it must provide for action, for achievement, 
for social control, for government, for social work, within 
the reasonable capacities of the adolescent learner. The 
activities of the Boy Scouts, of youthful camping parties, 
of voluntary organizations and self-governing groups in 
schools now suggest some of the possibilities in this direc- 
tion. But we shall have to multiply new openings. Here 
must begin the service activities for political participation, 
for defense, for business cooperation, for accumulation 
and use of capital, for the reform of anti-social individ- 
uals, for the cooperative support of the handicapped, and 
for the pioneering of new constructive effort. We can 
take for granted the disposition of all adolescents to be- 
come good and approved and progressive members of 
society, but we must kindle to the utmost the motives and 
vitalize the sanctions that, for these younger people, give 
depth and reality to their social education. We shall find 
it practicable and desirable to make more of appeal to the 
spirit of fair play, to the sense of personal loyalty, to the 
jealousy of personal honor, to the desire for success, to 
the altruistic, and to the religious sentiments than we have 
been doing heretofore, and we shall learn how to do it in 
6 



82 THE HIGH SCHOOL OF TO-MORROW 

each case without provoking self -consciousness and oppo- 
sition, or permitting indifference and " slacking." The 
high school of 1925 will have learned how to give " back- 
bone " to moral and social education, as, in some degree, 
the Y. M. C. A., the boys' clubs, the Boy Scout leaders, 
and the conductors of camps have already done. But it 
will find also that many of the best results of social edu- 
cation are to be developed, not in the shape of specific 
habits, definite knowledge, and vigorous activities, but 
rather as kindled appreciations, refined sentiments, and 
uplifted ideals. For all this, pedagogical methods have yet 
largely to be devised. 

Finally, we must expect that opportunities for voca- 
tional education in endless variety will evolve under, or 
in connection with, the secondary schools of 1925. Until 
the economic and domestic basis of our present civilization 
changes radically it will be inevitable that the majority 
of our boys and girls will desire and will be obliged by 
circumstances to enter upon self-supporting work some- 
where between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. For 
many of these it will be found that specific vocational 
schools designed to give, or, at any rate, to supervise their 
initial vocational education will be of the utmost import- 
ance. Some stages of habituation and of experience look- 
ing to direction ( f oremanship ) may well be left to the by- 
education of shop, office, and farm. The exact relation 
of the vocational school to the school of general or liberal 
education cannot now be foreseen, but in all probability 
it will somewhat resemble the relation of the college of 
vocational education to the liberal arts college in the 
American university. Certainly these vocational schools, 
whether making " full-time " offerings v ( that is, undertak- 
ing all three phases of vocational education; — practical 
participation, related technical study, and general studies 



ANTICIPATIONS 83 

related to the vocation) or only " part-time " offerings 
(evening schools, continuation schools, etc., supplement- 
ing the learning acquired in the commercial pursuit of a 
vocation), will be closely linked up with the occupational 
fields for which preparation ( or further training is being 
given. If these occupations are found in productive in- 
dustries occupying partially segregated districts, then, 
doubtless, the full-time vocational schools will also be 
located in these districts. 

Probably vocational education and general education 
(including under the latter physical, social, and cultural) 
will not be blended or fused in the efficient secondary 
schools of 1925, as seems to be the case now in certain 
quasi-vocational schools ostensibly making offerings of 
vocational instruction or training as elements in a modified 
scheme of general education (actually they give only 
" denatured " vocational education). All signs point to 
the conclusion that in 1925 the person learning a vocation 
in a school will organize his time and expend his energy 
much as does now the approved employee in home, shop, 
or office, or en the farm, on the road, or on shipboard — 
he will give f rom seven to ten hours of " the heart of the 
day " to his vocational pursuit (practice and learning) 
and his remaining waking hours (and holidays) to recrea- 
tion, the furthering of personal culture, and the discharge 
of his civic and other social responsibilities. 

In addition to definition of purposes the high school 
of 1925 will surely have made great advances over pres- 
ent practice as regards the definition of effective methods 
of instruction and training. For this purpose it will be 
essential to distinguish kinds and qualities of useful learn- 
ing and to apply the distinctions thus made to the varied 
departments of human activity which we wish to improve 
or otherwise modify through our schooling. 



84 THE HIGH SCHOOL OF TO-MORROW 

For example, is it not desirable that pupil and teacher 
should know quite definitely and be in agreement as to 
when learning should result in well-assimilated knowledge, 
capable of instant application in the course of life's prac- 
tical activities? Without doubt, secondary education 
to-day lacks a certain vertebral quality, a kind of hard- 
ness and firmness. Its results are vague, its graduates 
intellectually flabby to a degree that disturbs us. But, 
certainly, the way out of this difficulty is not that of simply 
making all studies hard, of setting more rigorous exam- 
inations, of "firing" weaker pupils, or of appealing to 
the sense of fear and the methods of " driving " generally. 

As in all other fields of activity where high standards 
prevail, education must learn to discriminate the quality 
oif the means which it employs to attain ends. We need 
" vertebrate " quality in secondary education, but we need 
much besides. Liberal education can better be defined in 
terms of appreciation, interest, or capacity for wise choice 
than in terms of power to execute, or to apply knowledge 
definitely. What are the pedagogic means of producing 
appreciation, taste, or interest over wide areas? We 
have much to learn here. 

The high school of 1925 will probably be much more 
effective than is the high school of 191 6 in training the 
mental powers of its pupils. For one thing, it will doubt- 
less teach the pupils themselves something of mental 
science — at least to the extent of enabling them to appre- 
ciate the importance of keeping the complicated machin- 
ery of the nervous system in good running order, and the 
large possibilities of so training the powers of the mind 
that optimum efficiency shall be the outcome. 

Quite certainly, however, the high school of 1925 will 
not be, as is the high school of the present, the victim of 
the quackeries, the cure-alls, the " luck stones," that came 



ANTICIPATIONS 85 

into vogue in the ages of educational faith. In the dark 
ages of medicine it was widely taught and believed that 
some nauseous drugs, some awful concoctions of dead or 
diseased organic matter, were the indispensable cures for 
human ailments. In somewhat the same way the modern 
educational exemplars of the mediaeval healer insist that 
some nauseous and unnatural studies, largely made up 
of dead matter, must be employed for the educational 
salvation of the young. 

For all practical purposes the future high school will 
insist upon the fullest mental training as a necessary 
feature and expected by-product in connection with the 
pursuit of objectives otherwise worth while also. Con- 
ceivably, provision will be made for mental gymnastics, 
for " corrective " work, for very specific training on oc- 
casions when the need of that shall be apparent. But this 
will be something so different from our present unintel- 
ligent reliance upon algebra and Latin as chosen panaceas 
for the undisciplined mind that any comparison would 
be out of the question. 

Will anything like uniform programs of instruction 
and training for large numbers of pupils be found in the 
high schools of the future except in the case of particular 
groups of studies and forms of practice designed to pro- 
duce vocational efficiency in a given field ? It is doubtful. 
The field of human culture is so large, its valuable pros- 
pects so many, that each learner, under wise guidance, 
will usually make his individual program, subject, of 
course, as is the modern university, to the administrative 
limitations of the institution to make many and 
varied offerings. 

Hence, we may be certain that the large, rich, sec- 
ondary schools of 1925, holding forth opportunities suited 
to all children from twelve to eighteen years of age, will 



86 THE HIGH SCHOOL OP TO-MORROW 

offer a wide range of activities, some of the " hard- work " 
order, some of the " high-grade play " order, and that no 
pupil will be debarred from making his own program 
except for weighty reasons, the burden of establishing the 
validity of which will rest upon the school. But it will 
be assumed that the guardians of the pupils, as well as 
the pupils themselves, are disposed to do the things educa- 
tionally that will prove most profitable to them, and that 
advisory agencies will be found in the school to indicate 
what lines of study, of personal training, and of culture 
will prove most worth while. We may hope that the 
doctrine of the innate depravity o>f secondary-school 
students, as well as the doctrine of the incorrigible im- 
becility of their parents, will have been rendered innocu- 
ous, if not obsolete. 

A special word may be said as to the probable place 
of science and mathematics in the high schools of 1925. 

First, while absolute prescriptions will be rare, it will 
generally be expected that all students will give some 
time to reading, amateur experimentation, and field study, 
in a sufficient variety of fields of science to beget in them 
wide and generous appreciation of the part played by 
science in modern life. All the work offered with this end 
in view will be of the " beta " type. 1 It is to be hoped 
that students of educational psychology will have dis- 
covered satisfactory means (organized materials, reading- 
matter, opportunities for experimental work) and 
methods to make learning of this kind count toward 
liberal education when given under school auspices. At 

1 The reader should be on guard against confusing the alpha or 
" hard-work " class, and beta, or " high-grade play class," as here 
designated for the high-school curriculum with the classes of work 
designated by alpha and beta in the junior high-school curriculum. 
In the latter, the distinction between alpha and beta work was between 
that aimed to develop action or execution, and that aimed to 
develop appreciation. 



CURRICULUM PROPOSALS 87 

present many of our pupils are left to the chances of 
general reading, the moving pictures, and personal asso^- 
ciations to obtain an appreciative contact with the inspir- 
ing aspects of modern scientific achievement. 

For the present we should devote our best efforts to 
the organization of a course — very flexible and very allur- 
ing — in general science for youths from twelve to fifteen 
years of age. One hopes that a similar course in mathe- 
matics could be evolved, but, with the traditions of that 
subject crystallized as they now are, the situation seems 
hopeless. Certainly, from the point of view of any sound 
theory of liberal education the thing is possible and most 
highly desirable. 

Some branches of science and of mathematics offered 
as " alpha. " units will, in the future high school, be de- 
signed primarily to serve as prevocational studies ; that is, 
students anticipating entry upon certain mathematics- or 
science-using vocations will deliberately seek, as prelim- 
inary thereto, equipment in the shape of ability to use 
these subjects as instruments. Probably adherence to this 
primary aim will result in great modifications of these 
subjects from the pedagogic forms in which they now 
appear, and tribute must be paid to the large amounts of 
experimental and genuinely constructive work done in 
this direction by school men in and around Chicago. 

Then, of course, some mathematics and some science, 
always in highly specialized and very directly " applied " 
forms, will appear in the various vocational schools clus- 
tering under the secondary-school organization of 
the future. 

3. CURRICULUM PROPOSALS 

Below is given a long list of the " subjects " divided 
into alpha (" hard work ") and beta (" amateur," " high- 



88 



THE HIGH SCHOOL OF TO-MORROW 



A LIST OF POSSIBLE SECONDARY-SCHOOL SUBJECTS FOR 
A "MODERN" HIGH SCHOOL 



Name of subject * 



Alpha units Beta units 



I. I. 

2. 
3- 

4- 
5- 
6. 

7- 
8. 

9- 

10. 

11. 

II. 12. 

13. 
14. 

15. 
16. 

17. 
18. 
19. 
20. 

III. 21. 
22. 

23- 
24. 

25. 
26. 
27. 
28. 
29. 
30. 

IV. 31. 
32. 
33- 

34- 

35- 
36. 

37- 
38. 

39- 

V. 40. 

41. 

42. 



English language: 

English grammar 

English written composition 

Silent reading 

Voice culture 

Oral reading 

Public speaking 

Rhetoric 

General study of English 

History of English language 

Current usage 

English literature: 

American selections 

Nineteenth-century English selections 

Classical English selections 

Contemporary fiction 

Contemporary drama and poetry 

Contemporary general literature 

Historical review of English literature 

Intensive study of selections 

Natural science: 

General science 

Astronomy 

Geography 

Geology 

Biology and evolution 

Natural history of man 

Physics , 

Chemistry 

Biology 

Social science: 

Community civics 

Study of nations, historical and con- 
temporary 

Essentials of social science, with ma- 
terials for historical perspective. . . . 

History, American 

History, general 

School government, practice 

Electoral government, national, state 
and local, including voting. 

Social ethics 

Mental science: 

General mental science 

Methods of study 



1 

1 or 2 
K or 1 



1 
1 
1 

H or 1 



1 

1 or 2 
1 or 2 



1 

1 

1 or 2 
1 or 2 



* Figures at left refer to explanatory notes at end of section. A "unit" haB the 
same value as a "Carnegie unit.'' 



CURRICULUM PROPOSALS 



89 



A LIST OP POSSIBLE SECONDARY-SCHOOL SUBJECTS FOR 
A "MODERN" HIGH SCHOOL— Continued 



Name of subject * 



Alpha units Beta units 



VI. 43. 
44. 

45- 
46. 

47- 

48. 

VII. 49. 

50. 

51. 

% 52. 

53. 

VIII. 54- 

55. 

'. 56. 

57. 

58. 

59. 
60. 
61. 
62. 

63. 

64. 

IX. 65. 
66. 
67. 
68. 
69. 
70. 

71. 

X. 72. 

73- 
74. 
75. 
76. 

77- 

XI. 78. 

79. 

80. 

81. 

82. 

XII. 83. 

84. 
85. 



Mathematics: 

General mathematics # 

Algebra 

Plain geometry 

Trigonometry and solid geometry . . 

Prevocational arithmetic 

Classical language and literature: 

Classical language andliterature, general 

Latin in relation to English 

Latin language 

Greek language 

Modern language: 

German reading 

French reading 

Spanish reading 

Russian reading , 

Spoken German , 

Spoken French 

Spoken Spanish , 

Prevocational Spanish reading 

German literature 

French literature , 

Graphic and plastic art: 

Drawing and painting, amateur , 

Mechanical drawing 

Illustration, amateur , 

Design, 2d and 3d dimension, amateur 

Design, prevocational 

Art appreciation, historical and con- 
temporary , 

Music: 

Chorus singing 

Individual vocal 

Individual instrumental 

Band 

Musical appreciation (including his- 
torical) 

Physical education: 

General hygiene and sanitation 

Play, games, field sports 

Individual corrective exercise 

Rifle team and hiking 

Vocational guidance: 

General reading-course 

Tests for vocations 



2 
2 

or 2 
or 2 
or 2 
or 2 
or 2 
or 2 
or 2 
1 



1 or 2 



1 or 2 



1 or 2 
1 or 2 



1 or 2 



1 or 2 

1 or 2 
1 or 2 



* Figures at left refer to explanatory notes at end of section. A "unit" ha« the 
value as a "Carnegie unit." 



same 



po 



THE HIGH SCHOOL OF TO-MORROW 



A LIST OF POSSIBLE SECONDARY-SCHOOL SUBJECTS FOR 
A "MODERN" HIGH SCHOOL— Continued 



Name of subject * 



Alpha units 



Beta units 



XIII. 86. 
87. 
88. 
89. 
90. 

XIV. 91. 
92. 

93- 
94. 

95- 

96. 

97- 

98. 

99- 
100. 
101. 

102. 
103. 
104. 

105. 
106. 



Practical arts: 

Agricultural arts 

Industrial arts 

Commercial arts 

Household arts 

Vocational training: 

Machine metal work, practice (school, 
commercial shop) 

Machine metal work, technical 

Machine metal work, informational . . . 

Machine metal work, part time in pri- 
vate shop 

Machine metal work, technical (school) 

Machine metal work, general 

Gardening, home farm practice 

Gardening, technical (school) 

Gardening, informational (school) .... 

Counter salesmanship (private shop 
practice) 

Salesmanship, technical (school) 

Salesmanship, informational (school) . . 

Homemaking, practice (private home) 

Homemaking, technical (school) 

Homemaking, informational 



4 or 8 
2 or 4 



1 or 2 
1 or 2 
1 or 2 
1 or 2 



1 or 2 



4 or 8 
^ or 4 

1 or 2 
4 or 8 

2 or 4 



4 or 8 
2 or 4 



4 or 8 
2 or 4 



1 or 2 



1 or 2 



1 or 2 



* Figures at left refer to explanatory notes at end of section. A "unit" has the 
same value as a "Carnegie unit." 

Note. — Repeat for other vocations, such as : house carpentry, printer, painter, 
fireman, teamster, electrical worker, weaver, shoemaking specialist, etc.; farmer, 
stock raiser, . farmhand, florist, horticulturist, etc.; stenographer, bookkeeper, field 
salesman, clerk, file clerk, etc.; wage-earning domestic, "mothers' helper," children's 
nurse, waitress, etc. 

grade play " ) classes, which will possibly be considered 
by the school authorities of 1925 in determining the offer- 
ings which it is feasible for a particular school to make. 
It would be easy to add to or otherwise modify this list 
according to one's perconception as to things " educa- 
tionally most worth while. " Until we possess a more ade- 
quate educational psychology, and especially sociology, 
we shall, of course, have few satisfactory criteria as to 
the " worth whiteness " of these or any other proposed 
members of secondary-school curricula. 



EXPLANATORY NOTES 91 

The measures indicated by the figures in the columns 
on the right (■" Carnegie units ") have little validity, of 
course, and are included merely to suggest the desirability 
of eventually evaluating all these studies somehow in 
terms of the amount of time and — it is to be hoped — 
effort which should properly be given them. 

EXPLANATORY NOTES 

1. English language is the term here used to cover all forms of 
oral and written expression and of apprehension on a technical 
basis, such as silent reading. 

2. A technical study, especially of the principles of fundamentally 
good writing and reading — probably different aspects of the same 
subject. It may be assumed that the correction of solecisms of 
speech wMl be made independently of this study. 

3. The subject as ordinarily understood. 

4. A subject not now developed, but which offers much promise 
and is capable of having developed a technic of its own. 

5. Results to function especially in speech and oral composition. 

6. A specialty for those desiring effectiveness in this department, 
either for socially decorative or for practical purposes, e.g., pros- 
pective teachers. 

7. To cover a wide range — speaking to several persons simul- 
taneously or addressing large audiences. 

8. Like grammar, a formal study of principles for the sake of 
good writing and reading. 

9. A systematic general study of elements that enter into the 
effective use of English. Intended as an alternative for those not 
electing two or more of the subjects already named. 

10. Purely an appreciative study, based upon lectures and the 
reading of choice works. 

11. An appreciative study based chiefly upon good usage of 
English by contemporary writers and speakers, bringing out espe- 
cially their distinguishing qualities. 

12. To cover all phases of literature in the vernacular. The 
actual objectives of this study are not yet clearly defined, but our 
faith in its possibilities is strong. As a matter of fact we shall ulti- 
mately classify the objectives of the study of English literature under 
three heads: (a) informational and historical, (b) for purposes of 
aesthetic appreciation, and (c) for purposes of socialization and 
character building. 

13-19. Appreciative studies in the fields indicated, all elective, 
with, perhaps, requirement that not less than two shall be taken by 
every student. Few selections should be prescribed for all pupils 
alike. Much individuality should be allowed, and teaching is to be 
largely by way of conferences following readings by pupils. 



92 THE HIGH SCHOOL OF TO-MORROW 

20. Intensive study of one or more selections to obtain mastery 
of method of analytical study of English literature. 

21. Objects of natural science teaching should probably be three- 
fold: (a) appreciative insight into phenomena of environment, (b) 
mastery of distinct fields for prevocational purposes and interest in 
sympathetic study, and (c) scientific method which should be a 
by-product of all the teaching, it being remembered that scientific 
method has its appreciative as well as its executive aspects. 

22-27. Appreciative studies based upon amateur motives of re- 
search and doing, and utilizing general reading, lectures, etc. 

28-30. Systematic studies intended to be prevocational for some 
and to satisfy the demands of those who desire or on whose behalf — 
e.g., college admission — is desired rigorous study. 

31. Social science includes historical studies, but it is assumed 
that history starts with analysis of social science as based on con- 
temporary life. 

32. One-half unit of rigorous study of facts, with a view to their 
application of the results of such study, and one-half unit of appre- 
ciative reading, etc. 

33. An appreciative study. 

34. Contemporary situations of social science studied, after which 
careful study of historical antecedents. 

35-36. Courses resembling those now found, but divided into 
the two phases. ^ 

37. The practice of school government by pupils willing to take 
an active part in official action, leadership, etc. 

38. Systematic study in part, appreciative study in part. 

39. Appreciative reading. 

40. A proposed study, undeveloped as yet in secondary educa- 
tion, but of utmost importance. 

41. An appreciative study of phenomena and their interpretations 
as far as the pupils can go. 

42. Systematic study of methods of effective learning. 

43. An appreciative study of the part played in modern life 
by mathematics. 

44-48. Studies designed to effect permanent mastery. 

49. Classical languages' and literature. Studied chiefly from the 
point of view of contributions to liberal education. 

50. An appreciative study of the place of classical language and 
literature in history and in the foundations of the English language. 

51. A study not yet developed, but analogous to word analysis 
as formerly studied. 

52-53. Definite language studies, with a view to certain pre- 
scribed forms of mastery. 

54. It is assumed that the objectives to be kept in view will be 
more clearly defined than is the case at the present time in modern 
language teaching. 

55-62. Definite forms of mastery in accordance with preestab- 
lished standards. 



EXPLANATORY NOTES 93 

63-64. Appreciative approaches on the basis of forms of literary 
presentation not yet organized, doubtless using translation chiefly. 

65. Chiefly designed to contribute to the ends of liberal education. 

66. The amateur and appreciative basis to be emphasized. 

67. Prevocational usages contemplated principally. 
68-71. Self-explanatory. 

72-77. Self-explanatory. 

78-80. Quantity might be prescribed, but particular forms left 
optional. 

81. Prescribed and routine work required. 

82. Subject may be elected, but once chosen, definite efficiency 
should be the outcome. 

83-84. Self-explanatory. 

85. A course of tests for pupils interested in particular vocations 
might be prescribed, perhaps to be called " prevocational training." 

86-90. All of these studies placed on appreciative basis. The 
method is assumed to be one of intensive sampling and largely 
based on individual interests. Might be utilized sparingly for 
vocational guidance. 

91-106. A particular trade must be selected, then provision made 
for practical • instruction in it, followed by provision for technical 
instruction. A distinction is suggested between practical instruction 
in schoolshop which might occupy, primarily, a period of from one 
month to two years, followed by transfer of learner to commercial 
shop where part of time is reserved for continuation school or part- 
time school attendance. 

In the case of any particular occupation a study on the apprecia- 
tive basis of the more cultural aspects should be provided also. 



CHAPTER V 

THE ESSENTIALS OF LIBERAL EDUCATION 
WITHOUT LATIN 

I. OUR EDUCATIONAL SHORTCOMINGS 

Let us, with something of the resolution with which 
we met the stern realities of war, also recognize that 
as a people we are deficient in the standards and attain- 
ments of liberal education as these are required to live 
up to the position and responsibilities which are sure 
to be ours in the twentieth century, as a result of this 
war ; that ours is a conspicuously superficial culture ; and 
that our ideals arid our insight, where the genuine human- 
ities of our day are involved, are in many essential respects 
lacking in depth and sincerity, and especially in the qual- 
ities of reality. As certainly as we watched from a dis- 
tance the storm mount and finally sweep us into its depths 
while we trembled in apprehension and irresolution, so 
certainly shall we again and again find ourselves in the 
near future unready to meet the new world problems that 
are inevitably to confront us. We are seriously unpre- 
pared for our coming part in diplomacy, interchange of 
knowledge, and the promotion of constructive programs 
making for international cooperation and friendliness. 

How many among us can use a foreign language with 
precision and effect? To whom shall we look when we 
seek spokesmen to the Japanese, the Russians, the Chinese 
and the Brazilians? How few and how meagerly read 
are the books and journals that speak to our people of the 
pro founder stirrings of government, social policy and 
economic enterprise in those lands whose destinies are 

94 



/' 



OUR EDUCATIONAL SHORTCOMINGS 95 

sure yet to be interwoven with our own ! How little in 
any genuine sense do we yet appreciate the extent and 
character of the transformations even now steadily and 
rapidly taking place in the very soil from which spring 
those plants that we call art, literature, culture, religion, 
and democracy, because of contemporary diffusion and 
deepening of scientific spirit and method ! 

And yet in some respects we are the most extensively 
taught people in the world. In the public and private high 
schools of the United States are found to-day many hun- 
dreds of thousands of our most gifted and most ambitious 
boys and girls between fourteen and eighteen years of age. 
Our numerous colleges, founded close upon the heels of 
settlement in all our states, and especially colleges making 
no pretensions as to offerings of special vocational train- 
ing, have long been crowded with young men and women, 
the finest products of our blended and prosperous people. 
America has not stinted in providing for aspiring youth 
the means of culture as that has been understood. In no 
other country has so large a proportion of young men and 
women been given the opportunities and incentives for 
all those studies which supposedly make for informing the 
mind and enriching the spirit — in other words, for human- 
ism. Certainly, we can hardly rebuke ourselves for indif- 
ference, for deficiency of high intent, or for niggardliness 
of support in matters of what we believed to be liberal edu- 
cation. And it is just as certain, notwithstanding frequent 
allegations to the contrary, that the large majority of the 
hundreds of thousands of youth constantly seeking our 
higher schools and colleges, are not in quest, only, or even 
chiefly, of the education which they can turn to immediate 
practical advantage — in the narrowly utilitarian sense. 

Nevertheless, in spite of good intentions and an abun- 
dant provision of material means, our agencies of liberal 



9 6 ESSENTIALS OP LIBERAL EDUCATION 

education have, I believe, conspicuously failed to meet 
the needs of our nation in this age. They have left us in 
a state of intellectual and spiritual unpreparedness. Why ? 
Largely, I contend, because those to whom we have 
entrusted the direction of our institutions of higher learn- 
ing have had no adequate understanding of the meaning 
and character of liberal education as that must be devel- 
oped for the needs of a dynamic civilization expanding 
and deepening into the twentieth century, a civilization 
carrying along growing aspirations for democracy, for 
harmony among peoples, and for prof ounder understand- 
ing of the essential things of the present and the future. 
At a time when all the vital elements o>f political, religious, 
economic and cultural life were being reshaped by forces 
of incomprehensible magnitude and complexity, many of 
our strongest educational leaders have continued to pros- 
trate themselves before decaying shrines of the past. With 
good intentions, but bad performance, they have, in the 
name of an unsound psychology and a false pedagogy, 
constituted themselves the voluntary defenders of a static 
social order. With eyes aloof and minds closed to the 
realities of present and future, they have ever tried to hold 
the thoughts and aspirations of their disciples to the de- 
parted glories of a Greece or a Rome, to the culture of 
a thirteenth or sixteenth century, on the assumption that 
these, and these chiefly, exemplify the high and noble 
things of spirit and mind which should be the foundation 
of all fine learning suited to a modern world. 

2. THE FETICH OF PRESCRIBED LATIN 

For generations, and almost unto yesterday, they 
caused the dead hands of Latin, Greek and mathematics 
to hold in leash and often to paralyze the aspirations of our 
youth to share in the appreciation, and perhaps to aid in 



THE FETICH OF PRESCRIBED LATIN 97 

the creation, of cultural products significant of our New- 
World character and opportunities. Millions of American 
boys and girls, the best of our stock and of our democratic 
social life, have come gladly uf) to our schools, naively 
seeking the bread that would nurture them in the idealism 
and achievement of modern America; and to them has 
been given — what? Shreds and scraps of two complex 
ancient languages that were never to become really in- 
telligible to most of them, and could not, in the very nature 
of the case, become more than slightly intelligible, except 
to a very few, and which were destined to be, in ninety- 
nine cases out of every hundred, almost completely for- 
gotten within ten years of the closing of school life. Ac- 
companying the prescribed and often meaningless studies 
of the grammar and composition of these languages, were 
also studies, hardly less pitiful, of classical texts, to the 
elucidation of which the less scrupulous students have 
helped themselves by the ever-ready interlinear. Hun- 
dreds of thousands of our youth have toiled reluctantly 
line by line through the Anabasis and millions have pain- 
fully translated Caesar's Commentaries — splendid bits of 
composition in themselves, but about as significant to the 
realities of a nineteenth or twentieth century as bows and 
arrows would be in modern warfare, or Roman galleys 
in the naval contests of to-morrow. Our educational con- 
servatives have been industriously trying to gather figs 
of liberal education from the thistles of the classics. They 
have turned their eyes so constantly backward that they 
have themselves eventually become incapable of seeing 
clearly the realities of present and future. They have 
never learned that the twentieth century was eventually 
due in education as it was obviously arriving in science, 
economic achievement, social economy, medicine, en- 
gineering, and agriculture. 
7 



98 ESSENTIALS OF LIBERAL EDUCATION 

It was inevitable, of course, that as America found 
itself politically, economically, and socially, it should try 
to free itself of the obviously useless trammels of the past. 
Classical studies in schools and colleges have therefore 
become more and more vestigial. Boys and girls by hun- 
dreds of thousands, and usually those of superior ability 
and home environment, still elect the skeletonized Latin 
offered in public high schools, because of the possibility 
that they may want to attend those strong, endowed insti- 
tutions whose social connections, wealth and historic 
strength enable them long to resist the modernizing in- 
fluences to which institutions more closely in touch with 
the spirit of the age and more responsive to the will of 
democracy have in part yielded. Almost universally in 
our private schools, and still quite generally in our public 
schools, American youth study and recite in perfunctory 
spirit the meaningless rituals of Latin grammar and 
Roman classic. But there rarely results any genuine inter- 
est in either the ancient language or its so-called literature. 
The wholesome common-sense characteristic of Ameri- 
cans soon asserts itself. Half contemptuous, half tolerant, 
and wholly uninterested, and an easy victim to< the dis- 
honesty of the " pony," the boy passes his antiquated 
tests for admission to the college whose social opportun- 
ities mean so much to him. He promptly relegates to the 
lumber-room of his mind the broken antiques with which 
misguided teachers have tried to equip him. The colleges 
(a steadily diminishing number, however), having ex- 
acted the ancient ceremonial observance, now usually 
permit the youth to proceed in freer ways towards 
his degree. 

But if the study of Latin has degenerated to the ves- 
tigial position here indicated, why the strong opposition 



THE FETICH OF PRESCRIBED LATIN 99 

manifested against it on the part of those who call them- 
selves liberals in secondary and college education? The 
exactions of time and energy imposed by the stated 
amounts of Latin now required by even our more con- 
servative institutions do not seem excessive. A mini- 
mum of from one to two thousand hours of study and 
recitation given out of the lifetime of an individual to 
an enterprise of learning with such honorable antecedents 
(in former centuries) as the study of Latin surely seems 
no great sacrifice. The college admission requirement 
against which we inveigh rarely demands more than one- 
fourth of the learner's time through a four-year secondary 
school course. 

It ought to be obvious that, in the main, the motives 
of those who seek to remove Latin from the list of the 
specific prescriptions required for any high-school course, 
or for candidacy for any liberal arts degree are not 
founded on mere prejudice or utilitarianism. It is, of 
course, an easily made charge that the so-called opponents 
of Latin — who are in reality only opponents of the monop- 
olistic position accorded at present to Latin — are inter- 
ested only in bread-and-butter education, that they are 
lacking in devotion to the ideals of culture, that they are 
infected with the anarchistic spirit of the age which would 
cut loose from the moorings of established institutions 
and inherited traditions. 

It is not part of my present purpose to reply to these 
criticisms. However well founded they may be in the case 
of a few opponents of Latin, they do not apply to the 
many students of education whose attitudes have been 
formed only as a result of extensive comparative study of 
the possible and desirable objectives of all advanced in- 
struction and training. 



ioo ESSENTIALS OF LIBERAL EDUCATION 

3. LATIN AS A BARRIER 

Those of us who disapprove the present protected 
position of Latin as a secondary-school study, a position 
made possible only by the requirements imposed by power- 
ful institutions of higher learning, do so for the very 
fundamental reasons that, in the first place, the insistently 
repeated allegations as to the educational values of Latin 
as now taught are, in fact, without demonstrated validity, 
and that, in the second place, Latin, as an artificially pro- 
tected study, stands as one pronounced barrier to the de- 
velopment of truly effective liberal education suited to the 
genius of the American people and to the needs of a 
twentieth century democracy. We contend that to give 
any study in a system of liberal education a sacrosanct 
and artificially protected place on half mystical and 
wholly traditional grounds is to corrupt the sources, and 
to invalidate the methods, of all true liberal education from 
the outset. The values pretended to be found in the study 
of Latin impress the scientific person who thinks in terms 
of present and future results as being like the meaning- 
less mummeries and symbols of religious rituals that have 
long outlived the period of their vitality. These alleged 
values rest actually in part on old customs of little pres- 
ent worth, in part on mere stubborn devotion to the 
ancient for its own sake, and in part on the rewards 
always to be won by clever exploiters of the credulity 
of those whose faiths are easily enlisted in the ultra- 
modern or ultra-antique. 

What curious defenses are still conjured up in defense 
of the classical studies and especially on behalf of that 
clinging " dead hand " study, Latin! All educators of any 
breadth of view appreciate the unequalled importance of 
the " humanities/' those studies designed to lead the minds 



LATIN AS A BARRIER 101 

and spirits of our growing youth to apprehend the things 
that have fine and big messages of human possibilities and 
achievement. In a broad and real sense the " humanities " 
are always to be cherished as vital studies in any plan of 
liberal education. But are we to delude ourselves into 
thinking that the slow and perfunctory dissection of a few 
classical works of literature, produced by great minds that 
lived in regions and times the thoughts, feelings, and 
aspirations of which are almost inconceivably far removed 
from ours, could serve, except in one possible instance in 
a thousand, to produce the kinds of insight and appre- 
ciation that are properly to be begotten of those studies 
which we may sincerely call the humanities? 

Again, we are solemnly assured that through the study 
of these ancient languages and the few easily available 
examples of their literatures, there is produced a kind of 
magic mental discipline, a unique kind of sharpening of 
the mental faculties, not to be found in studies of other 
languages or literatures, nor in other subjects based on the 
realities of our own day and generation. As if the living 
gymnastics of mind were not best to be secured through 
those activities of mental and spiritual apprehension and 
action which come from strong efforts to* possess and to 
control the realities of habit, knowledge, and ideal that 
have worth for to-day and for to-morrow! 

We are told, too, in words of well-simulated profund- 
ity, that contemporary civilization has its roots in the old 
civilizations which flourished in the Italian and Grecian 
peninsulas, and that it is through study of the surviving 
desiccated examples of those cultures that our youth are 
best able to gain access to the more complex cultures of 
our own times. As if any sound system of pedagogy 
should or could have the unformed mind make its first 



102 ESSENTIALS OF LIBERAL EDUCATION 

essays in fields that are so remote in time and place as still 
to be largely unintelligible ! 

We are also assured that some knowledge of Latin is 
essential to the mastery of English or of a modern foreign 
language. But here again we are given no evidence that 
makes allowance for the great selective forces operating 
in schools as heretofore conducted. Many a self-educated 
Lincoln or Walt Whitman has given us fine virile English ; 
and certainly thousands who have made good records in 
Latin and Greek have later given us English that is but as 
hollow brass and tinkling cymbal. We know too little 
yet of the psychology of good language training to speak 
with confidence of these matters. If, as a partial result 
of the numberless hours given by our youth to the study 
of the classics since colonial days, we could point to prev- 
alent forceful and fine vernacular usage as one accomplish- 
ment, and to some real mastery of modern foreign 
tongues as another, there would at least be ground for 
shifting the burden of proof to the opponents of the 
monopolies long accorded to Latin and Greek and still held 
by Latin. But, in reality, we exhibit among our college- 
educated classes no such achievements that are not equally 
to be attributed to the superior home environments and to 
the opportunities and exactions of the social positions of 
these more favored groups. Any critical analysis, even 
in the light of our present uncertain educational science, of 
the valuable objectives and useful methods of language 
training, either in the vernacular or in a foreign tongue, 
must always strengthen the convictions of common sense 
that direct investment of available time and energy in the 
positive and specific pursuit of the actual ends we desire 
is the best investment we can make. 

Finally, we are told that students who elect Latin in 
our schools reveal themselves later as having better minds 



LATIN AS A BARRIER 103 

than those who do not take Latin, and that as men and 
women they succeed better along almost all lines. But 
to those who realize the forces of selection always oper- 
ative among parents and even among children themselves, 
the inferences usually drawn from these facts represent 
the baldest kind of reasoning "" post hoc ergo propter hoc." 
There is much evidence indeed that heretofore, and even 
yet, pupils electing courses containing Latin are natively 
superior to those who do not make such elections. Parents 
aspiring after the best for their children do not set them- 
selves up as experts in determining values of studies. 
Naturally, they accept the judgments of the higher insti- 
tutions, and, in matters in which confessedly they have lit- 
tle knowledge, they prefer to abide by respected custom 
and tradition. But there exists as yet no available evidence 
to show that, even in mental powers, as judged by ordinary 
standards, the superior students found in Latin owe their 
superiority to their Latin studies. 

It is not here contended, of course, that other second- 
ary-school studies, as now administered, give results 
superior to Latin. Practically, viewed from the stand- 
point of the needs of our age, our entire program of sec- 
ondary education has been stricken with the blight of 
blind traditionalism and formalism. Mathematics, the 
one other subject apart from English that enjoys a monop- 
olistic position like that held by Latin, supplies to most 
of the girls and to many of the boys obliged to study it, 
probably nothing more substantial than intellectual husks. 
French and German, as now taught, are, when judged 
by the standards of interest and mastery that should char- 
acterize a truly liberal education, largely cultural shams. 
High-school sciences, long ago placed under the bondage 
of a pedagogy derived from a now obsolete theory of 
mental faculties, have become bankrupt as means of giving 



104 ESSENTIALS OF LIBERAL EDUCATION 

genuine appreciation and insight to the mind that must 
interpret well or ill the scientific social inheritance of the 
nineteenth century. Even history and English literature, 
largely because of faulty aims and methods, have so far 
failed to yield to our millions of youth the riches of 
humanistic vision and sentiment which ought certainly 
to be derived from these studies when pursued 
under right conditions. 

4. SOME ESSENTIALS 

What we now need is someone to speak to us with the 
voice of a trumpet the message which seems long ago to 
have been heard by young Athenians — that has every- 
where been heard by generous youth destined to add to the 
spiritual possessions of their age — namely that as a strong 
people, our best opportunities to develop new strength, to 
do creative work, are here and now. We must learn to 
build for to-day and the future, and to turn to the past 
only when, in any given case, we shall have planted our 
feet firmly on the rock of the living present and the nascent 
to-morrow. Let us as a nation take due pride in the 
achievements of our forefathers and ourselves, and at the 
same time earnestly resolve yet further to enrich humanity 
by our efforts. 

America's contributions already made to the social in- 
heritance of the modern world are neither meager nor 
unimportant. Our democratic ideals of government and 
social life, our scientific mastery of economic forces, our 
steadily forming conceptions of community well-being — 
these constitute social assets fundamental to all other 
forms of social evolution and in all of these we have played 
our part as explorers, inventors and master builders. 

It is now our opportunity and our obligation so to 
organize existing educational and other agencies of cul- 



SOME ESSENTIALS 105 

ture that here too the American people may be strong and 
creative. The feet of many of our gifted young men 
and women, given right incentive, can be turned into the 
paths of humanistic leadership 1 * just as certainly as were 
those of creative men and women in the virile and forward 
looking epochs of the past. 

But to achieve these results we must develop in the 
fields of liberal education the conditions which have made 
the American people originators in the spheres of politics, 
mechanical invention, and business organization. We 
must cease to make ourselves dependent on the past, except 
as we perceive its possible service to' present and future. 
We must encourage our youth during their plastic years 
to look about them and forward in the world of vital 
realities for objectives, and to look within themselves for 
incentives to action. They must learn to adapt with 
caution, and not at all flatly to imitate the work of those 
who lived under conditions very unlike those which prevail 
to-day. They must learn that we live in an age as unlike 
those of Athens or Rome or fifteenth century Florence, 
as are the topography and climate of the Mediterranean 
shores unlike the great geographic reaches and tremen- 
dous meteorological alternations of our continent. 

The great war more than ever impressed upon us as a 
people that if we are to fulfill our destiny, we must culti- 
vate originality. We must in every possible way seek 
out the inventive spirit among us and give to that endless 
varieties of encouragement and positive incentive. We 
must cease to be worshippers of the antique. Our 
Golden Age lies in the future and in prospecting our way 
towards it, we can, when we are sufficiently mature, and 
in exceptional instances, borrow even from the records of 
the journey ings of Xenophon or the quests of Ulysses. 
But we must borrow with restraint and discretion ; other- 



io6 ESSENTIALS OF LIBERAL EDUCATION 

wise, our aspiring youth will become bemired in the accre- 
tions of ancient history. 

The intellectual and spiritual assets wherewith the 
American people have entered the twentieth century have 
certainly never been equalled. Our economic control of 
nature has made us by far the wealthiest of nations in 
point of material resources, and these constitute the essen- 
tial foundations, if we use them rightly, for the leisure, 
the appreciation and the education through which less 
tangible values are to be realized. Our one hundred mil- 
lion people constitute a population homogeneous and 
cooperative to an extent never yet equalled elsewhere. 

But the faith of our people in education and their dis- 
position to support it is the greatest of these assets. In 
191 5 over 1,500,000 of the adolescent youth of this Amer- 
ican people were studying in our public and private sec- 
ondary schools. Over 250,000 young men and women 
were in our colleges. These hundreds of thousands rep- 
resented the best of aspiring America. They are, to 
the extent that their schools and their surroundings are 
capable of inspiring them, eager to serve their country and 
time. They have acquired a kind of frankness and vital 
interest in realities that we think of as American. They 
are not easily subjugated to the traditional just because 
it is traditional, but neither are they at heart irreverent 
towards ancient or great things when the ancient is really 
significant and things alleged to be great ( for present or 
future) are such in reality. They do not reverence author- 
ity as such, for they see in submission to authority a means 
and not an end of the truly democratic life. 

Utterly without foundation is the carelessly made 
charge that these young Americans are preoccupied with 
sordid ambitions for money or position. True, each boy 
or young man, and, equally, be it said to their credit, each 



POSSIBLE PROGRAMS 107 

girl and young woman, now looks forward to the day 
when he shall be able to render through some suitable 
vocation valuable service to the society which has nour- 
ished him. As a means to fullest serviceableness in this 
vocation, he desires and actively embraces at the right 
time, genuine vocational education ; and in some collective 
capacity America is now disposed to expand opportunities 
for vocational education as supplemental to the general 
or liberal education which our regular schools have here- 
tofore offered. Much as we aspire to a due measure of 
leisure for all, we do not approve the ideal of a leisure 
class as such. We are too familiar with the close con- 
nections heretofore obtaining between leisure classes and a 
prevalent sensual sestheticism and moral degeneracy. 

These clean-limbed, open-minded youth of ours — are 
we to believe that they have only inferior capacities for 
higher idealism, for the development of that new human- 
ism for which the twentieth century calls? It is the 
proper function of education to help face these adolescents 
towards the future. This is no static civilization of ours. 
We are not seeking to remain eternally on the same 
level. We have learned the inevitableness of change, of 
evolution, and we have begun to feel, if not yet clearly to 
perceive, the possibilities of controlled evolution. 

5. POSSIBLE PROGRAMS 

What is the problem before the educational institu- 
tions of America? It is, let us repeat, to provide on be- 
half of our youth, the genuine means of a liberal educa- 
tion that shall be adapted to our age, our people, our 
circumstances. What would the best of the Athenians 
of the age of Pericles do were they in our place to-day? 
Would they try to find in forgotten tongues and antiquated 
fragments of literature the culture, the idealism, the men- 



108 ESSENTIALS OF LIBERAL EDUCATION 

tal disciplines that will transform plastic youths into citi- 
zens strong to uphold the state, to advance up the slopes 
of intellectual inquiry and of appreciation of the possi- 
bilities of conscious cooperative direction of social forces 
towards the higher goals that the purposeful discovery 
of the future will reveal to us ? 

Let us first try to interpret what is undoubtedly in 
America to-day a very well-developed, even if only par- 
tially articulate, spirit of humanism — using that term in 
a legitimately modernized sense. It is not possible for us 
to locate the gods behind the summit of Mt. Olympus. 
To us they are abroad in our own land and among our 
own people, and the effects of their wills are everywhere 
manifest in our own day. In many of the most important 
matters of life our attitude and outlook are almost incon- 
ceivably different from those of the Greeks and Romans. 
Slavery and all other forcible subjugations of the body 
and spirit of man, not required for the general social 
well-being, have become things abhorrent. Moral degra- 
dation, poverty, and all the other sources and concomitants 
of low efficiency, of undemocratic competition, and of 
persisting unhappiness, are steadily being repudiated by the 
social conscience of our time. More keenly than ever 
do we perceive the needless horrors entailed by aggres- 
sive war, the disease-like character of crime and immor- 
ality, and the social wastage resulting from lack of 
knowledge and skill. A constantly increasing proportion 
of our people are steadily striving towards the day when 
within our borders may be found a vast and a thriving 
population, keenly appreciative of all the sources of light 
and fine sentiment that help to make life richer and purer. 
To the attainment of these conditions, we more than ever 
perceive the need of originality, of science, of the devel- 
opment of the best humanistic ideals and means. 



POSSIBLE PROGRAMS 109 

We begin to understand our responsibilities for de- 
veloping types of citizenship that Greece or Rome could 
not possibly conceive. It is our conviction that in a 
democracy, it belongs to all to assure to each the right to 
be socially efficient in all ways — culturally and morally, 
no less than physically and vocationally; and to enforce 
the performance by each of the duties which inevitably 
attend and complement rights. America sets the world 
high example in its persistent demands for increasingly 
wholesome family life, a better position for women, a fair 
start in life for all children. We are striving towards the 
time when in a purposeful way we may use all forms of 
fine art to the fullest extent that is possible in our day 
and generation as instruments of control, development, 
enrichment of life. We certainly see much farther into 
the things of society than did or could our Greek or Judean 
or Roman or Teutonic forebears. We have now the 
means of developing, as they could not, things of the 
mind and things of the spirit. 

The new aims and methods will have to be developed 
in large part experimentally by educators who are well 
grounded in psychology and sociology. It is improbable 
that these experimenters will fail to make full use of the 
valuable materials to be found in existing customs. Like 
the Pasteurs, Edisons, and Lincolns, who, in other fields 
have wrought to new achievements, they will gladly take 
from past practice or surviving custom the light that will 
kelp them on their way. All they ask is that their efforts 
be not blocked by vested interests and protected faiths. 
There is no credit to a civilized society in allowing preju- 
dice and blind conservatism to visit death on a Socrates, 
ignomy on a Columbus, and disheartening obstruction on 
a Pasteur. The experimental schools of to-morrow — and 
we must and shall have scores of them — ought to be given 



no ESSENTIALS OF LIBERAL EDUCATION 

the freest possible scope to develop and test new and varied 
objectives and the means of realizing them. 

In a few essential respects, it is certainly even 
now practicable for the student of modern education 
to predict some probable developments in the new 
liberal education. 

For the adolescent youth the processes of that edu- 
cation will involve reasonable amounts of the sharpest and 
sternest discipline — discipline of powers of body, of mind, 
and of moral character. But the youth himself will cer- 
tainly be an appreciative and informed party as regards 
the ends of these disciplines. He will not usually need 
to be driven in fear, or be invited to proceed in blind 
faith, because the valid worth of that which he must do 
will be a matter of generally understood demonstration. 

Like~the Athenian youth whom we delight to recall, 
he will be trained, and trained hard if necessary, in those 
powers that have a visibly functional place in society as 
it is to-day or will be to-morrow. No longer will he be 
obliged, in the name of an obsolete pedagogy, to subject 
himself to disciplines which, like the nostrums of mediaeval 
medicine, could rarely be taken by intelligent persons 
except in a spirit of uncertainty and misgiving. 

We are indeed learning to be ashamed of that devo- 
tion to educational " simples " which in our secondary 
education deluded us into thinking that a year or two 
of work with algebra and geometry by adolescents who 
would later make no vocational use of the knowledge 
acquired, or four years of indifferent study of a classical 
language, with its resulting meager grasp of literary 
selection, read often with the furtive aid of ponies, can 
give for our day and generation the foundations of the 
powers which we idealize as intellectual discipline. We 
are learning the futilities of that misleading and median- 



POSSIBLE PROGRAMS 



in 



ical pedagogy based upon a metaphysical and unscientific 
psychology which thinks to find in Latin and algebra 
intellectual philosopher's stones^ — to find in these mum- 
mified studies, quite divorced from all the realities of 
mind, spirit and body as they belong to our day and gener- 
ation, precious means of nurture for mind and spirit. 

But the new liberal education will achieve only part 
of its results through the rigorous processes of hard disci- 
pline. It will provide also for many forms of growth 
through appeals to native interest, ambition, and in- 
stinctive good will. It will discover a pedagogy suited 
to the easy evoking and establishing of appreciations and 
ideals of approved worth. It is a widespread error of 
educators of the older type that schools rated good by cur- 
rent standards develop appreciation, tastes and ideals gen- 
erally through the exercises of the classroom. This hap- 
pens occasionally for the rare pupil under an average 
teacher and for many pupils under the exceptional teacher 
— that one teacher out of a thousand whose native genius 
can make even mathematics or Latin fascinating. But 
these finer qualities are much more often the by-products 
of the school life, the residual effects of play, social inter- 
course, and miscellaneous reading. The secondary school 
of the future will have a splendid opportunity to extend 
and render more effective these forms of education of 
which the disciplinarian and taskmaster knows little and 
often cares less, A new type of schoolmaster must arise 
who can comprehend the significance in true cultural 
education of self-inspired work, leisurely development of 
tastes and abiding interests, and the richness of inspired 
social intercourse. 

Much light is now being shed on the problems of devel- 
oping a functioning liberal education through the progress 
recently made in defining the ends and means of effective 



ii2 ESSENTIALS OF LIBERAL EDUCATION 

vocational education. Heretofore, all education except 
the vocational education designed to prepare for a few 
professions, has been vaguely assumed to " fit for life" — 
in the vocational no less than in the cultural and civic 
sense. Faculties of liberal arts colleges have solemnly 
defended the thesis " a college education pays " when 
business men, moved only by considerations of vocational 
efficiency, have challenged them. That a college education 
might well " pay " on grounds wholly other than voca- 
tional — and pay both the individual in culture and the 
other abiding satisfactions of life, as well as society in 
the higher type of citizen produced — should be a highly 
defensible thesis. But endless confusion results when the 
objectives of vocational education and of liberal education 
are confused, or when it is assumed that the same means 
and methods will serve equally the ends of each. Voca- 
tional education in any properly delimited meaning of the 
words must have its processes, its means and methods 
strictly determined by the requirements of a known call- 
ing — and in the modern world these tend to proliferate 
and multiply along lines of specialization to an almost 
indefinite extent. 

Fortunately, we now see that we cannot effectively 
" vocationalize " education by offering in a high school or 
college a few elective studies or courses of an academic 
nature, with a slight accompaniment of laboratory illus- 
tration or practice. We have been attempting this in num- 
berless cases with agricultural, industrial and commercial 
education — and even with home economics, journalism, 
business administration, teaching and social work. Only 
recently are we coming to perceive the great wastefulness 
and futility of it all. We arc certainly destined soon to 
have a system of vocational schools, the vestibuled ap- 
proaches to the thousands of vocations now found in 



POSSIBLE PROGRAMS 113 

civilized society, but these schools will be as definitely 
differentiated from schools of general education as are 
now colleges of law, medicine, dentistry and military 
leadership. We may expect then that the functions prop- 
erly belonging to schools not vocational in purpose will 
be. revealed more clearly. With this knowledge, we can 
proceed to devise the most effective general or liberalizing 
education for those thousands who must or will close their 
general school in their fourteenth or fifteenth year; for 
those other thousands, more fortunately situated, who can 
give from one to four precious years to the liberal educa- 
tion offered by the secondary school before embarking on 
the study or practice of a specific vocation ; and also for 
that minority who usually combine much native ability 
with fortunate home conditions, who aspire to a " college 
degree " before taking up the study of a profession. Here 
lie our opportunities to differentiate the ends and to deter- 
mine the means of genuine liberal education. 

Among its larger objectives this liberal education must 
develop and conserve for present and future generations 
in those who are to lead, attitudes of intelligent hopeful- 
ness, and faiths in human improvement and all that we 
call progress. Towards other people and towards peoples 
of different qualities in our midst, it must stand for in- 
crease in sympathetic understanding and mutual helpful- 
ness. As regards the great social inheritance of knowl- 
edge, customs, and institutions which we have acquired 
from the past, its spirit should be appreciative and discrim- 
inating, based on the conviction that some things, and 
some things only, of that inheritance have a vital, a func- 
tional significance for the present and the future. 

Among the more specific results of a better liberal 
education, we trust that the men and women in the future 
will exhibit a finer and stronger command of our won- 
8 



ii 4 ESSENTIALS OF LIBERAL EDUCATION 

derful mother tongue than is now the case. A good com- 
mand of the vernacular is indeed among the vague ideals 
of our schools of liberal education now, but the means to 
their realization of this are seriously ineffective. We have 
every right to expect the discovery of educational means 
whereby education towards desirable mastery of English 
can steadily be improved. There exist beliefs — shall I say 
superstitious beliefs (certainly they rest on no adequate 
evidence) — that study of one or more alien tongues is a 
highly desirable, if not necessary, condition of sound 
attainments in the vernacular. But with English steadily 
evolving towards becoming a world language, we can 
have confidence that a fine command of it is possible 
under right methods of training, even to those who have 
secured no power over another language. 

It will readily be understood that well-developed in- 
sights into, and appreciations of, English literature must 
also count as an indispensable element in the liberal edu- 
cation of all our young men and women. But this is 
not to be interpreted as including only study of those 
portions of English literature which are held to be classics. 
Too often the older vernacular literature, like the ancient 
literatures in other languages, possesses no functional 
value in inspiring youth to seek to interpret and to share 
in the control of the social and cultural forces of the 
twentieth century. We must include appreciations, under- 
standings and evaluations of all that literature which is 
each year in process of being made — and which, in a col- 
lective way, often voices the aspirations and the forming 
social attitudes of the peoples and times in which we live. 
Of course, at present we know little of the best means and 
methods for the direction to such study; but they are 
certainly discoverable. 

Next in importance to the English language and Eng- 



POSSIBLE PROGRAMS 115 

lish literature as means of liberal education, we should 
place the social sciences, as these can be adapted to lay 
secure foundations of insight and ideals for good citizen- 
ship and fine human aspiration. But here again we must 
discard the traditions that have heretofore bound us to the 
ancient and the remote. History, that great encyclopaedic 
massing of data for the social sciences, must be made a 
subject of reference, not something to be studied for its 
own sake in chronological order by ithose youths who are 
laying the foundations for genuine humanistic culture. 
Students must first acquire concrete experience and defi- 
nite knowledge through vital contact with the significant 
realities of the living present ; then, as occasion offers, and 
needs of interpretation and perspective arise, they will 
be turned towards those things in history that demon- 
strably do function in better appreciation or understand- 
ing of the things of to-day, to-morrow and next century. 
The range and variety of problems to be solved by the 
citizen of a progressive democracy in the twentieth cen- 
tury are great indeed; and that can be no true culture, 
no true humanistic learning, which does not with sure- 
ness of aim and precision of method inspire and train the 
adolescent for their solution. 

Few will dispute the claim that in a modern scheme of 
liberal education a large place should also be given to 
natural science. The science subjects now found in our 
secondary schools and, to a large extent, in our liberal 
arts colleges, have rarely contributed in any genuine way 
to culture. They have suffered somewhat from the oppo- 
sition of the former defenders of the classics, but still 
more from their misguided friends who would, on the 
one hand, make them Cinderellas in the interest of voca- 
tional competency or else sharp drillmasters of " scien- 
tific method " and the mental discipline supposed to be 



n6 ESSENTIALS OF LIBERAL EDUCATION 

derived from an intellectual " cure-all." Wholly new- 
objectives and wholly new methods are needed in natural 
science teaching. Some successful experiments pointing 
ways to these are to be found even now. No one awake 
to the larger possibilities of liberal education need doubt 
that the natural sciences — those sources of insight and 
aspiration that have largely made the twentieth century, 
for good or for ill, what it is — can yet be made vital means 
of liberal education. 

There remain the fine arts of music, painting, and 
sculpture. Our schemes of so-called liberal education give 
little or no place to these to-day. But should not purposive 
development of taste and insight here be given prominence 
in any generous project for liberal education? Certainly 
discriminating and catholic appreciation of these fine 
arts constitute a large element in culture as best under- 
stood and defined. No less, certainly, when once the 
valid objectives of a functioning liberal education shall 
have been determined, we shall find appreciative studies 
of the fine arts giveu high rank among the means to 
that end. 

What do we desire with reference to the classics in 
our schools and colleges? Only this: that they shall be 
accorded no< special favors, given no artificially protected 
position. We wish the field of higher education to be 
made as open as possible to the end that in its every effort 
to devise, invent, and create the means of a liberal educa- 
tion adapted to the needs of our time and opportunities, 
we shall not be hampered by the dead hands of useless 
tradition, the old inertias and controls of an age that saw 
in a static civilization the highest of all earthly glories. 

Do we wish to prevent the study of the Latin, and 
especially of the Greek, language and literatures? As- 
suredly not! For those with genuine interests in such 



POSSIBLE PROGRAMS 117 

studies, every facility should be afforded in schools and 
colleges that can obtain enough students to justify the 
expense. And we hope that, given fewer students and 
the genuinely interested, such studies might become, for 
a few at any rate, genuine well-springs of interest, appre- 
ciation, and insight — something which is far from being 
the case at present. 

We earnestly desire that the great languages and 
literatures of Greece and of Rome, and of every other 
age that has enriched the world, shall be the objects from 
time to time of careful inquiry and developed appreciation 
by persons mature enough to serve as interpreters of these 
treasures to each succeeding generation. We believe that 
from age to age in the light of our own added knowledge 
and developed experience, these languages and literatures 
will still continue to make their contributions, as will, in 
somewhat similar measure, ancient Irish lore, the sagas 
of the European northwest, the philosophy of India, the 
religious writings of Confucius, and even the mythology 
of our own North American Indians. To none of these 
sources of inspiration can a country like ours in its future 
evolution be completely indifferent. From time to time, 
we shall expect aspiring spirits to visit these faraway 
lands and to* bring back some treasures fit for the adorn- 
ment of our temples. For these purposes, however, we 
shall require no compulsory study of these ancient lan- 
guages in our secondary schools or our colleges. Much 
more profitable will it be for us that individuals them- 
selves take the initiative from time to time in making the 
necessary explorations. 

In fact, a large part of the liberal education offered, 
even in the secondary school, will consist in the deep 
plumbing of a few intellectual or aesthetic fields in which 
the candidate has native interest and power. Under a 



u8 ESSENTIALS OF LIBERAL EDUCATION 

yet to be developed system of educational guidance, each 
learner will be induced, as part of this liberal education, 
to select some one field of culture and to make of that 
a life interest. Among these might well be: Greek lan- 
guage and literature; seventeenth-century English litera- 
ture; modern Japanese language, history, and literature; 
violin music; architecture; " natural history " of a given 
region; some branch of social science; eugenics. 

The foreign languages, ancient and modern, and 
mathematics — what place will finally be reserved for these 
subjects which, despite frequent allegation to the con- 
trary, now compose the heavier part of practically all 
programs of secondary education designed as prepara- 
tion for college, solely because of their supposed value 
as apparatus for mental gymnastics? It is perhaps too 
early to say with confidence. Algebra and geometry will 
unquestionably hold a strong position in the prevocational 
training of those who have reasonable expectations of 
entering vocations using mathematics as an important 
instrument. A few other persons may be expected to elect 
them through sheer native interest in the special intel- 
lectual activity and the particular insight which study 
affords. We shall hope and expect, too, that in addition 
to those who study for probable vocational use, a modern 
language, others may be induced to give the toil and 
enthusiasm required to beget that mastery of French, or 
Japanese, or Russian, or Spanish, which shall enable the 
fortunate possessors thereof, like generous amateur musi- 
cians, to be sources of appreciation and insight in circles 
where they move, as well as translators — in the larger 
sense of the term — of the good will and intellectual riches 
of the peoples whose culture has become accessible to 
them through the mastered language. In somewhat similar 
process may we also expect, as elsewhere suggested, fine 



POSSIBLE PROGRAMS 119 

spirits to prepare themselves, from time to time, to jour- 
ney intellectually in quest of treasure still to be found 
behind the linguistic walls of Greek, Latin, Sanscrit, 
Erse, and Inca writings. 

To make these things possible in education, much will 
yet be needed of courage, faith, inventiveness, and labor. 
But these are even now extensively enlisted in support of 
many progressive movements and experimental develop- 
ments. One immediate step that will help much is an 
educational declaration of independence which will release 
the grip of one of the few surviving relics of old-world 
tradition — a declaration of independence from the grip of 
the Dead Hand of Latin. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE OBJECTIVES OF MATHEMATICS 

As we turn to the social sciences in the search,, for 
scientific foundations of educational objectives, we find 
ourselves at times obliged to evaluate in terms of their 
social worth studies that have long had not only a re- 
spected place in school curriculums, but which have also 
taken on relatively fixed forms of organization. Of all 
of these studies mathematics is certainly the most typical. 
Mathematical disciplines and technics obviously play a 
much larger part in modern life than do the classic lan- 
guages ; and, unlike these, they function no less in various 
forms of vocational competency than in liberal culture. 
But certain divisions of arithmetic, as well as algebra 
and plane geometry, have quite certainly become educa- 
tional fetiches in recent years. Nowhere can we find 
better opportunities to begin our sociological inquiries into 
the relative values of historic school subjects. 

I. INTRODUCTORY 

The number of school hours actually available for the 
instruction and training of fortunately placed children 
rarely exceeds 10,000 between the ages of six and 
eighteen. Of these probably not less than 1200 to 1500 
are devoted to the study of the mathematical subjects. In 
the case of less fortunately circumstanced children fre- 
quently as much as 20 to 25 per cent, of their time avail- 
able for schooling is devoted to these studies. 

But mathematical studies are also the hardest for 
many pupils. From these they exact a large amount of 
120 



INTRODUCTORY 121 

intellectual toil, even drudgery. Pupils of inferior native 
abilities, and probably also some of superior particular 
abilities {e.g., along the lines of music, and literature), 
are often greatly discouraged through their failures 
in mathematics. 

Obviously a society that in effect requires its young 
people to give so much of their educational time and 
strenuously expended energy to such a group of studies 
should have excellent reasons clearly formulated for the 
exactions it makes. But such is certainly not the case now 
with the mathematical studies. 

Custom, rather than scientific analysis of social needs, 
seems still to play a major part in determining what 
amounts and kinds of arithmetic shall be required of all, 
as well as in giving to algebra and geometry their present 
highly protected positions. It is encouraging to find, how- 
ever, that within the last few years, a few noted 
teachers of mathematics have addressed themselves to 
investigations of the actual educational values to be de- 
rived, by given classes of learners, from stated types of 
mathematical study. 

For some years two distinct tendencies have been 
observable in the theory, if not the practices, of teaching 
mathematics in schools and colleges : (a) towards the sim- 
plification or omission of mathematical studies required 
of all pupils; and (b) towards increasing the variety of 
elective offerings. It is the writer's conviction that we 
are as yet only in the initial stages of these two move- 
ments. The most immediate practical questions before 
educators as regards mathematics teaching are, therefore : 
(a) what are the " minimum essentials " that shall be 
required of all in given schools or grades; and (b) what 
shall be the variety and character of the electives to be 
offered in given schools or grades? 



i22 OBJECTIVES OF MATHEMATICS 

In the curricula for grades seven to twelve as now 
usually found in our public schools, the mathematical 
studies are probably more definitely organized and rigidly 
administered than any other corresponding group. Com- 
prehensive and " hard " (even if somewhat "mushy") 
courses in arithmetic are almost universally prescribed 
in the seventh and eighth grades. Until very recently 
algebra and plane geometry have been prescribed uni- 
versally in high schools, and for admission to higher insti- 
tutions — while the flexibility yet permitted is very slight. 

The readjustments now taking place or soon due in 
secondary education will necessarily involve as full an 
examination as practicable of the purposes now served, 
or capable of being served, by all studies, including the 
mathematical studies. The methods of this examination 
should be, as far as the existing state of knowledge per- 
mits, psychological and sociological. 

Psychological studies are needed to show how far 
and in what directions the specific capacities and powers 
resulting from stated kinds and degrees of learning in 
mathematical fields affect capacities and powers in differ- 
ent or in more general fields. They are needed to show 
how far certain types of general or composite courses 
(general applied mathematics, industrial arts, etc.) give 
the species of appreciation insight and ideal that we recog- 
nize as educational or vocational guidance — abilities to 
choose well among prospective lines of study or other 
activity. Especially are they needed to enable us to deter- 
mine to what extent and under what conditions mathe- 
matical skill and knowledge of a relatively general nature, 
can be, and actually is, brought later into application to 
realistic and particular situations. 

But studies essentially sociological are even more 
needed. For what distinguishable social classes or groups 



INTRODUCTORY 123 

can or do specifiable types and degrees of mathemati- 
cal learning possess values — values as contributions to 
personal culture, or as contributions to vocational pro- 
ficiency? Through sociological studies it is now prac- 
ticable in a measure to differentiate and delimit many 
types of social classes or groups and to ascertain — al- 
though by measures necessarily crude as yet — the educa- 
tional needs and productive potencies of each. It is at 
least partially within the powers of psychologists to deter- 
mine what are reasonable amounts of learning of specified 
kinds that can be accomplished, e.g., between the ages of 
six and eighteen by persons of approximately known 
grades of ability. Equally it should soon be possible for 
the student of educational aims or objectives, making use 
particularly of sociological studies of needed powers and 
capacities among different groups of adults now compos- 
ing society, or of those who will compose it from one to 
three decades hence, to arrive at some fairly useful judg- 
ments relative to courses to be prescribed or recommended 
in the schools of to-day. 

(The " classes " or " groups " referred to here are not, 
of course, those created by artificial social distinctions, 
but those due to natural abilities, vocational necessities, 
etc. It is assumed that men and women, rich and poor, 
black and white, have the same legitimate educational 
needs in so far as they have the same abilities, oppor- 
tunities for similar standards of living, and openings for 
vocational achievement. But it is also assumed that a 
provident society will not try to give the same kind or 
degree — it may try to make the same investment of effort 
— of mathematical education to those gifted with excellent 
mental powers as to the poorly endowed ; to those who will 
probably follow the clothing-making vocations or law, 
as to electrical engineers ; to those who will probably have 



i2 4 OBJECTIVES OF MATHEMATICS 

a $900 a year standard of living as to those who will 
probably have a $5000 a year standard. ) 

It is obvious, of course, that the largest problem con- 
fronting the educational sociologist prosecuting these 
studies for the purpose of determining optimum pro- 
grams of education, is that of relative educational values. 
Time is short and art — art of educating no less than 
others — is long. The world of possible learning — even 
for our young people — is, like the menu of a pre-war 
hotel, a multiplicity of good things. Wiscfom dictates 
that we spend our limited time, energy and ability on the 
best. What are they ? Best for whom ? Best under what 
circumstances of native power, interest, probable future 
need? These are questions for educators and admin- 
istrators to answer — but to an increasing extent they will 
have to be answered on the basis of sociological knowl- 
edge, rather-than on the basis of the faiths of idealists 
and partisans, the beliefs and customary practices that 
have formed and crystallized, one hardly knows how, in 
the social inheritance. 

For some years the writer has orally and in writing 
criticized adversely certain beliefs and traditional prac- 
tices relative to mathematics in secondary education, espe- 
cially the following : 

1. The belief that algebra and geometry, as custom- 
arily taught, are functional to an important extent in a 
large variety of vocations or higher studies likely to be 
followed by students. 

2. The belief, formerly widely held, that algebra and 
geometry are peculiarly valuable studies as means oif gen- 
eral mental discipline, and that therefore their prescription 
in high schools or for admission to college could be justi- 
fied on this ground primarily, when it could be shown 



INTRODUCTORY 125 

that for certain classes of students it was doubtful if they 
could be shown to possess other primary values. 

3. The belief that algebra and geometry, as usually 
taught, added substantially to the cultural possessions 
of learners taking them, irrespective of keenness of in- 
terest or of ability displayed. 

4. The practice of requiring the study of algebra and 
geometry in all, or nearly all, high-school courses, at least 
as a condition of graduation, without intelligent regard, 
for example, to the probable needs and interests of girls, 
of girls and boys who would probably remain in school but 
one or two years, or of pupils intending early to enter 
commercial vocations, etc. 

5. The practice on the part of all but a negligible 
number of colleges of absolutely prescribing algebra and 
geometry for admission, irrespective of courses to 
be followed. 

The writer has always felt very doubtful about the 
results of the arithmetic teaching in grades seven and 
eight ; but the problem of educational aims has here been 
so complicated with problems of administration {e.g., 
the usual requirement that teachers of these grades must 
teach all subjects) and of inherently faulty methods which 
were, nevertheless, capable of reform, that it has seemed 
less urgent to open up questions as to the wisdom of pre- 
scribing arithmetic in these grades. 

Now, however, that these upper grades are, in pro- 
gressive school systems, being transformed into junior 
high schools, thereby giving opportunities for flexible cur- 
ricula and adaptation of courses to the needs of varying 
groups, problems of prescribed and elective mathematics 
become as urgent here as in the high school itself. 

But the writer has never urged the omission of the 
usual mathematical studies from schools large enough to 



i 2 6 OBJECTIVES OF MATHEMATICS 

provide classes of working size of those electing them. 
He has always insisted that he would not prevent, nor, 
in the light of our present ignorance, and the no less 
doubtful values of possible alternative studies, even dis- 
courage, girls desirous of taking mathematics from 
doing so. 

It is the purpose of this chapter to analyze in the light 
of present thought some of the problems involved as to 
the place of mathematics studies in secondary schools, 
and to set forth, as a basis for further inquiry and dis- 
cussion, certain hypotheses and proposals, especially as 
regards educational aims. To avoid the confusion in- 
herent in the use of the many vernacular words necessarily 
adopted for technical uses in this field some definitions 
and concrete exemplifications of words and phrases used 
with more or less particular meanings are included. 

2. GENERAL PROPOSITIONS 

These general propositions are submitted for 
discussion : 

i. The most fundamental sociological consideration 
affecting the prescription and offering of mathematical 
studies in public schools is that involved in man's dual 
position as producer and as consumer. Every normal 
adult is a producer of goods — wheat, or cloth, or trans- 
portation, or healing service, or machines, or teaching. 
And the constant trend, originating far back of the begin- 
nings of civilization, is always towards greater special- 
ization of productive work, until in the United States 
to-day, men, women, and juveniles follow more than 2000 
distinct vocations. But every person, adult or other, is 
likewise a consumer or utilizer of goods^ — wheat and cloth 
and transportation and healing service and machines and 



GENERAL PROPOSITIONS 127 

teaching. (Utilization — of capital goods — primarily for 
further production is here placed under production.) 
But the constant trend in general utilization is towards 
universality of consumption — especially in democracies 
composed of individuals all having aspirations towards 
higher standards of living. 

One set of aims in mathematics instruction, therefore, 
is established by requirements of good utilization — that 
is, good buying, good reading, good investing, good com- 
prehension of environment. Another set of aims is estab- 
lished by requirements of particular vocations — those 
respectively of bookkeeper, machinist, architect, artillery 
officer, housewife, printer, etc. 

2. Within the limits that can readily be established 
by sociological research the desirable minimum universal 
standards (or, for classes of persons of known grades 
of ability and available resources — time, leisure, etc. — 
towards acquiring education, even desirable optimum 
standards) of mathematical powers (of execution, per- 
formance) and capacities (for appreciation) essential to 
good utilization can be ascertained and defined. 

3. It should likewise be readily possible, through soci- 
ological research, to ascertain and define the requirements 
of mathematical powers (as to kind and degree) essential 
to the effective pursuit of any known vocation, and also 
to ascertain the approximate number of persons who 
should seek, be encouraged or be prepared, to follow that 
vocation at any given time. 

4. Some mathematical powers and capacities — per- 
haps to add, to appreciate the significance of easy graphs, 
to compute simple interest, to appreciate that the distance 
of inaccessible points can be measured by mathematical 
means — will be found to be functional or even necessary, 
in both utilization and in many forms of production. 



128 OBJECTIVESIOFIMATHEMATICS 

Where such is the demonstrated case, the aim of utiliza- 
tion can be assumed to be the more controlling in framing 
programs of instruction and training. 

5. In planning for school curricula it is essential that 
we assume optimum working conditions — as to size, 
staffing and equipment of schools, vocational hetereo- 
geneousness of groups of adults, varieties of abilities and 
interest found, etc. When guiding principles for curricula 
shall have been determined for these optimum conditions, 
then adaptations can be made along most profitable lines 
for other conditions. For example, in a junior high 
school of 1200 pupils several different courses in mathe- 
matics could economically be offered if the varied inter- 
ests of the pupils seemed to make it advisable. But in a 
junior high school of only fifty pupils probably but one 

course could be offered. 

( 

3. JUNIOR HIGH-SCHOOL MATHEMATICS 

The following propositions relative to desirable 
aims of mathematics teaching in junior high schools 
are submitted: 

1. Between the ages of eight and twelve (particularly 
in grades four to six inclusive — it is doubtful whether, 
in states where school attendance is assured to fourteen 
years of age, anything is gained by teaching arithmetic in 
the first two grades) the essential mathematics of utiliza- 
tion required by prevalent American standards of living 
should be required by all, and can be met by nearly all. 
This mathematics should include much of what is now 
given in these grades, reorganized as to methods so as to 
be as concrete and interpretative of environing life as 
practicable. But the controlling aims should be more 
consciously focused on the needs of adult utilization than 



JUNIOR HIGH-SCHOOL MATHEMATICS 129 

is now the case — of buying, change making, simple ac- 
counting, newspaper reading, thrift, etc. 

No mathematics can profitably be required or offered 
in the first six grades primarily towards ends of produc- 
tion or vocation. 

2. On the assumption that full-time school attend- 
ance is obligatory up to fourteen years of age; (a) mathe- 
matics of utilization, made very direct and practical, 
should be required of those who (aged twelve to four- 
teen) have not yet met sixth-grade standards; (b) short, 
intensive courses — e.g., thirty hours in each half year — of 
mathematics of utilization, partly progressive from work 
done in first six grades, partly in very specific fields of 
more advanced utilization appropriate to the greater ma- 
turity of pupils, could well be required of all normal 
children in seventh and eighth grades. But topics or cases 
must clearly center in demonstrated general needs of later 
utilization, e.g., interpreting simple statistics as presented 
by news, and civic information, pages, keeping simple 
accounts, making correct change, interpreting railway 
time tables, computing wages, ascertaining right distri- 
bution of income, etc. 

3. Special short courses — in large junior high schools, 
several are possible — in advanced forms of the mathe- 
matics of utilization are ideally desirable as electives in 
the seventh and eighth grades. One or two of these might 
be A class courses, and one or two B class courses. 
Possible specific objectives for these courses, and possible 
methods for the B class courses, remain yet to be worked 
out through research and experiment. We now lack even 
acceptable terms and norms wherewith adequately to 
discuss them. 

4. Where a considerable number of the pupils will 
probably follow a particular vocation, it would be expe- 

9 



i 3 o OBJECTIVES OF MATHEMATICS 

dient to offer as eleotives one or more short, intensive 
prevocational courses in seventh and eighth grades. 

In any school, for example, it is reasonably certain 
that from 70 per cent, to 90 per cent, of the girls will 
eventually become homemakers. (It must be recalled 
that the homemaker as buyer, and account keeper for her 
family, is pursuing her vocation; only her personal buy- 
ing, etc., are to be counted as utilization.) Hence an 
elective prevocational course in the known mathematics 
of homemaking might well be offered. 

In many rural schools it is reasonably certain that 
30 to 60 per cent, of the boys will follow the local types 
of farming. Hence short intensive prevocational courses 
in mathematics adapted to the prevailing local types of 
farming can be devised. But it must be remembered that 
mathematics requirements prevocational to dairy farming 
will be very different from the mathematics prevocational 
to oyster farming ; and that both will be different from the 
mathematics prevocational to the types of farming that 
center major production respectively in oranges, cotton, 
India rubber, corn and hogs, green-house gardening, beet- 
sugar growing, " general farming " adapted to Vermont, 
" general farming " adapted to Southern Illinois, etc. 
" Farm arithmetic " as a general unlocalized subject is 
nearly as mystical (perhaps mythical) as " shop mathe- 
matics " (the sane query is, of course, " what kind of 
shop — shoe shop, tailor shop, diamond cutters' shop, 
watch repair shop? ") or " commercial arithmetic." 

Can other courses in genuinely prevocational " mathe- 
matics " be offered profitably in the junior high school ? 
Of course, if we frame our courses as suits of clothes were 
once made for asylum inmates, yes — because the wearer is 
expected to fit the suit, not the suit the wearer. But if 
we apply true tests, namely, that the major portion of what 



JUNIOR HIGH-SCHOOL MATHEMATICS 131 

is taught shall function in the vocation expected to be fol- 
lowed ; and that the major portion of those taught will be 
found eventually in the vocation towards which the pre- 
vocational study was taken — then it is doubtful whether 
in the usual community, prevocational courses in fields 
other than those above named can profitably be offered. 
But the problem of discovering the facts ought not to be 
difficult, once the conditions of the problem are determined 
and documented, and we resolve to> use accurate language 
instead of such." fuzzy " terms as " shop mathematics,' ' 
" commercial mathematics," etc. 

5. In large junior high schools there may well be 
offered, also, various special courses open to election, 
usually of the A class type, and centering in distinctive 
areas of mathematics, especially as applied in practical 
life. Under each of the partly descriptive titles below it 
is clearly practicable to group a large number of prob- 
lems, topics, exercises, even projects, sufficient to consti- 
tute a " hard " or A class course of from 30 to 180 
hours; and all adapted to the ages and ascertained abil- 
ities of the students likely to take them: (a) industrial 
mathematics — materials from twenty common trades and 
thirty factory occupations; (b) commercial mathematics 
— materials from fifteen generally known commercial call- 
ings; (c) introductory algebra; (d) inventional or intui- 
tional geometry; (e) geographical (and navigational) 
mathematics; (/) statistical mathematics (including in- 
terpretations through graphs), etc. 

But since in most cases there can be no guarantee 
that, for given pupils, the results of the work here sug- 
gested can function vocationally, the deceptive practice 
of calling such courses, directly or by implication, " pre- 
vocational " should be abandoned. Pupils should be 
encouraged to elect such courses as appeal strongly to 



i 3 2 OBJECTIVES OF MATHEMATICS 

their learning powers and interests; and coercion should 
be reserved only for defectives and recalcitrants. 

Possibly, for some pupils, work done in some of these 
courses may result in further insight as to future possi- 
bilities — the functions of educational or vocational 
guidance. But the practicability of using these or any 
other ordinary school courses for this purpose is still so 
shrouded in mystical assumption and tender-minded 
speculation that little attention should as yet be paid to 
this as a primary aim. 

4. SENIOR HIGH-SCHOOL MATHEMATICS 

The following propositions are offered as expressing 
one point of view with regard to mathematics in the four- 
year high school — by which is meant a non-vocational 
secondary school primarily for pupils fourteen to* eighteen 
years of age. r 

1. In view of the diversity and number of possible 
specific objectives, all of substantial worth, in high school 
liberal or general education and the varying character- 
istics of the pupils attending, there can be no justification 
for prescribing any one mathematical study, or even a 
stated minimum of mathematical study, for all. 

2. When sufficient numbers of pupils are known to be 
likely to pursue subsequent studies (in liberal arts college, 
vocational college or vocational school), or to enter a 
vocation towards preparation for which pupils of high- 
school powers can profitably take prevocational courses, 
then these courses should be offered and recommended 
as electives. 

Prevocational courses in mathematics should normally 
be offered only when: (a) a relatively large amount of 
mathematical skill and knowledge are required to begin 
study of, or initial practice of, the expected vocation; (b) 



SENIOR HIGH-SCHOOL MATHEMATICS 133 

a substantial part of the needed mathematics can readily 
be acquired some time in advance of the students' pre- 
paredness to enter the vocational school or vocation in 
view; and (c) it is probable that a large majority of the 
students electing the courses will go forward to the voca- 
tion. Failing these conditions, a high school should not 
expend valuable time and money on prevocational courses. 

Among the possibilities to be considered here are : (a) 
Pre-engineering algebra, geometry, and trigonometry; 
(b) pre-banking, or pre-accounting, statistical, and com- 
mercial mathematics; (c) pre-f arming mathematics to 
meet known local requirements; (d) pre-homemaking 
mathematics; (e) pre-navigational mathematics ; (/) pre- 
machine-shop mathematics; (g) and others. 

Do needs exist for pre-medical, pre-printing, pre-com- 
mission house, pre-legal, pre-theological, pre-elementary- 
school teaching, pre-tailoring, pre-dry-goods salesman- 
ship, pre-language teaching, pre-infantry lieutenancy, 
mathematics? We assume that in each of these cases, 
needed mathematics will also be offered in the respective 
vocational schools training for these vocations. 

3. One or more avowedly non-vocational or non- 
prevocational courses in mathematics (of an A class type) 
might well be offered as electives, and, of course, must be 
so offered as long as college entrance requirements remain 
on the present unscientific basis, where long and often 
,l arduous preparation in algebra and geometry is insisted 
upon, for traditional reasons in the main. Such require- 
ment probably has a " hurdle " or selective value — as a 
means of sifting out students of promising ability — but 
proper tests could probably be devised which could accom- 
plish the same results in a week (five hours) of the 
students' time rather than in two and one-half years (450 
hours) as is now the case. 



i 3 4 OBJECTIVES OF MATHEMATICS 

4. As means of truly cultural education, courses to 
produce appreciations of the parts played by mathematics 
in civilization — in revealing the heavens ; making possible 
bridges, tunnels, and lofty buildings; sailing the seas; 
harnessing electrical energy ; preserving land boundaries ; 
determining evolutionary changes in organisms, etc. — 
should be developed. But pedagogical difficulties to be 
overcome here are great and are doubtless factitiously in- 
creased because present mathematics teachers themselves 
fail to see in appreciation a very different type of objective 
from the objective of power of execution — although all 
are familiar with the purposes of producing appreciation 
of paintings on the part of those who cannot paint, appre- 
ciation of music on the part of those who can neither sing 
nor play, appreciation of cooking on the part of those who 
cannot cook. 

5. VOCATIONAL-SCHOOL MATHEMATICS 

L_ m m 

The following propositions are submitted with regard 
to mathematics in vocational schools : 

1. Every distinctive type of vocational school will, of 
course, provide for the teaching of needed special mathe- 
matics concurrently with the teaching of the other skills, 
knowledge, and ideals requisite for initiation into, and 
progress in, the vocation. Where some of these needs 
can economically be met through prevocational courses 
in other schools the provision of these in earlier schools 
will be encouraged. 

2. Most of the prevailing assumptions regarding the 
amount and character of the mathematical skill and 
knowledge required for the successful prosecution of 
vocations (over the years of the usual working time) are 
probably wrong. They are chiefly the products of uncriti- 



VOCATIONAL-SCHOOL MATHEMATICS 135 

cal thinking (and aspiration, often mistaken for thought) 
of persons of strong mathematical interest, partisan spe- 
cialists, whose formula is " He ought to know," but who 
rarely offer reasons, based on consideration of relative 
value of many subjects, why " he ought to know." 

3. Profitable studies could and should even now be 
made of topics like these : 

(a) What vocational mathematical knowledge and 
skill are now used by men and women successful in 
slightly more than average degree (the B class among 
workers rated as A, B, C, D — or excellent, fair, good, 
poor) in the following vocations : custom tailors, women 
stenographers, dentists, coast service sea captains, orange 
growers, electrical engineers, artillery officers, unspecial- 
ized village house carpenters, kindergarten teachers, 
teachers of French in high schools and colleges, retail 
grocers, automobile repair mechanics, soil analysts, job 
printers, poultry growers, produce commission merchants, 
vampers in shoe factory, jewelry (and watch) repair men 
and retailers, homemakers on budgets of $900 to $1200 
per year, homemakers on budgets of $3000 to $5000 per 
year, street-car motormen, piano tuners, locomotive en- 
gineers, pattern makers, telephone-line repair men, travel- 
ing salesmen for tobaccos, cigarette makers (girls fifteen 
to twenty-two years of age), seamstresses, waitresses, 
meteorologists, and over 2000 other vocations followed by 
the 40,000,000 wage-workers and 20,000,000 homemakers 
in the United States. 

(b) What additional or different mathematical knowl- 
edge and skill than that which they now possess would 
be advantageous to workers in above callings, and to w T hat 
extent can these be supplied, to their successors, either 
apart from, or in, special vocational schools? 



i 3 6 OBJECTIVES OF MATHEMATICS 

(c) What are the requirements of mathematical skill 
and knowledge common to groups of the above callings, 
and do we now produce these in non-vocational schools, 
or can we do so economically? 

6. RELATED PROBLEMS 

Any adequate discussion of the desirable and prac- 
ticable aims of mathematics teaching necessitates exam- 
ination of certain related problems which can be only 
briefly referred to here : ( i ) What may normally be ex- 
pected of children in the way of mathematical powers and 
capacities at the end of the sixth grade? (2) Can and 
should one or more courses in mathematics be employed 
towards the ends of educational or vocational guidance? 
(3) What are the probable extent and character of the 
mathematics required in teaching thrift, investments, etc., 
in general (consumers' civic) education? (4) Is it im- 
portant that algebra usr other mathematical subjects be 
taught as a means of giving general acquaintance with 
the significance and uses of formulse? (5) If mathe- 
matical studies be placed largely on an elective basis in the 
junior high school and wholly so in the senior high school, 
what will be the desirable alternatives for pupils electing 
no mathematics? 

1. The expected equipment of children at the end of 
the sixth grade, at least as regards knowledge and skills, 
is now largely standardized (exceptions are found in 
schools experimenting with innovations — which are 
chiefly innovations of method rather than aim). These 
standards can be ascertained from text-books, courses of 
study, inspectors examinations. 

Obviously this expected equipment can be evaluated in 
individual or social terms, once criteria are agreed upon 



RELATED PROBLEMS 137 

and formulated in comprehensible terms. For example, 
if consumers needs were deemed paramount, tests could 
be developed, and applied to determine what these are and 
how much time is normally required to meet them. 

Undoubtedly much of the arithmetic which we now 
teach, or try to teach, in the first six grades is useless or 
else our efforts futile; but we need new standards to 
determine what is wrong and what is right in our pres- 
ent procedure. 

2. Contemporary demands for vocational and, even 
more broadly, educational guidance foreshadow important 
new developments in the study of educational aims and the 
adaptation of educational means and methods to the 
achievement of predetermined ends on behalf of groups of 
children of known characteristics and needs. Wherever 
alternative courses of action, including choices of schools, 
or choices of curricula, courses or topics within schools, 
are possible in the future to children, we can reasonably 
expect that scientific skill and knowledge will be increas- 
ingly at the disposal of the child, his parents, his teachers, 
and even his probable future employers and the state 
itself in determining which alternative, all factors con- 
sidered, it is best for him to take. 

But it is obviously desirable that the processes of diag- 
nosis, recommendation and prescription under these con- 
ditions should be expeditious and economical. It is, for 
example, now proposed by some that a year's composite 
course in mathematics should be prescribed in the ninth 
grade in order to insure each high-school entrant oppor- 
tunity to " find himself " mathematically — and this after 
the pupil is expected to have given eight years already in 
part to the study of arithmetic ! But is not this too much 
time to require for the purposes of guidance? In fact, 



i 3 8 OBJECTIVES OF MATHEMATICS 

more fundamentally, is any school subject, as now taught, 
or as capable of being taught, at all well adapted to the 
ends of guidance? Must not the approaches eventually 
be on a wholly new basis? " Cut and try/' " the ex- 
pensive school of experience," " trial and error," " blind 
empiricism " — these are all heritages of prescientific 
stages in social evolution. When the military service can 
put into practice somewhat reasonably economical and 
effective " selective service," educators will surely not be 
found lagging. 

The writer does not undertake here to suggest effective 
means of guidance ; but he recommends that all attempts 
to preserve old prescriptions in new guise — manual train- 
ing, general science, composite mathematics — in the 
alleged interests of valid ends of guidance, self -disco very, 
etc., be scrutinized very carefully. 

3. " Thrift " and the making of investments is one 
desirable aim in education for utilization. In a well- 
ordered and progressive society we expect a constantly 
increasing proportion of adults to save and invest as cap- 
ital a portion of the wealth they produce. Hence the 
teaching of important knowledge and ideals relative to 
" thrift," and of such concrete topics as stocks and bonds, 
banking, life and other insurance, etc., become legitimate 
objectives of good social education. But do these topics 
belong primarily under the subject " mathematics " or 
that of " civics " ? They have their mathematical aspects, 
it is true, but from the standpoint of the non- vocational 
needs of the " utilizer " these mathematical aspects are 
small and of relatively little importance. Nowhere has 
the intrusion of specialized vocational aims done more to 
make the path of general, i.e., consumers', education ardu- 
ous and unprofitable than in these phases of arithmetic. 



RELATED PROBLEMS 139 

Indeed, the very insistence on the mathematics of stocks 
and bonds, insurance, banking, etc., now found in our 
text-books on arithmetic actually serves to defeat the 
attainment of the civic ends that should control in this 
department of education. 

(a) An analogy is found in geography. This sub- 
ject, as developed for non- vocational ends, has its mathe- 
matical aspects ; but to treat the subject as part of mathe- 
matics for this reason would be most inadvisable. A 
distinctive subject should be put under mathematics only 
when half or more of the effort to be put on it is clearly 
to be directed towards the acquisition of mathematical 
powers and appreciations — skills, knowledge, ideals, etc. 

4. Mathematics makes extensive use of those abbre- 
viations — of single words and multiple-word descriptions 
or " formulae " — which are extensively used to simplify 
or to render exact, written and oral communication. It 
is sometimes urged that algebra should be taught partly 
to give fundamental acquaintance with the use of formulae 
to describe or designate complex processes. But the em- 
ployment of algebra as a means to this end is open to the 
objection now generally held in all good pedagogy against 
teaching forms, apart from the substance they represent, 
the abstract before the concrete. 

The word " formula " is often used in the sense of 
" rule " or standardized process — according to which 
meaning all school subjects may be said to have their spe- 
cial formulae. Or the word may also mean, as in mathe- 
matics, chemistry, mechanics, biology, etc., abbreviated 
statements of rules, tested procedures, etc., through sym- 
bols, abbreviations of words, etc. Very young children 
are taught that inbreathed air has much oxygen and little 
carbonic-acid gas, while outbreathed air has much car- 
bonic-acid gas and less oxygen; that three times six are 



i 4 o OBJECTIVES OF MATHEMATICS 

eighteen; that 12 M means noon; that " e.g." stands for 
" for example " ; that where " and " is omitted between 
nouns in a series a comma is inserted. Older pupils are 
taught that oxygen and hydrogen can be united in definite 
preparations so as to give water, the process being sym- 
bolized in one way, the product in a slightly different way ; 
that the circumference of a circle always bears the same 
ratio to the diameter, such ratio being symbolized by a 
certain character; that the total distance passed over by 
a body falling freely to the earth in a given time, etc., etc. 

But obviously the important things in all these cases 
are the concrete realities, facts, ideas, involved. Surely 
it is wasteful if not futile to spend much time upon the 
shorthand before it is known what is to be expressed. 
Undoubtedly we should teach arithmetic in the lower 
grades so as to produce greater freedom in using appro- 
priate formulae. Quite possibly we should lead our chil- 
dren to be familiar earlier than is now the case with 
meteorological, accounting, hygienic, geographic, and 
musical formulae. But these are problems of special sub- 
jects other than mathematics. 

5. It is sometimes contended that if mathematical 
subjects were made elective in junior and senior high 
schools, no other sufficient subjects or other materials of 
study as alternatives could be found. Doubters on this 
point are asked to remember that no pupil can now take 
more than a part of the offerings of a standard high 
school, and that for many years we have suffered from 
congested curricula in the upper grades of elementary 
schools. The least of the difficulties of educators in urban 
high schools and junior high schools (rural schools, of 
course, for other reasons constitute problems by them- 
selves) will be to supply studies alternative to mathemati- 
cal studies. 



SUMMARY 141 



7. SUMMARY 



(The following summary of conclusions stated, as was 
explained, " dogmatically," was submitted to one of the 
ablest teachers of, and writers on, mathematics in the 
country. His comments are given in parenthesis. ) 

1. There exists a distinct body of mathematical 
knowledge which is very useful, even necessary, for men 
as consumers. This knowledge is capable of being organ- 
ized as a special subject which would be very different 
from any organization of mathematics now found. Is 
this probably true? Is it probably significant, if true? 

("It is probably not true that the organization of 
mathematics which you mention would be ' very different 
from any organization of mathematics now found/ It 
would probably have a good deal of similarity to such 
work as is done in certain classes in the Horace Mann 
School for Girls, in the Lincoln School, in the Ethical 
Culture Schools (all in New York City), and in many 
other schools. ") 

2. The minimum essentials of consumers' arithmetic 
can be taught in the first six grades plus a thirty-hour 
course in grade seven and another in grade eight. Is this 
probably so? How can this assertion be disproved? 

("Your assertion is probably true. If you would 
change * thirty ' to ' ninety/ it is proved in European 
schools generally. The plan is not new, but I presume you 
reduce the hours more than present conditions justify.") 

3. Advanced " unit courses " in consumers' arith- 
metic could well be offered as electives in grades 
seven and eight, possibly in still higher grades. Is there 
any objection? 

("The only objection is the danger of making your 
courses so short and intensive that pupils will not have 



i 4 2 OBJECTIVES OF MATHEMATICS 

time to digest them. No one really knows anything about 
this at present, least of all the man who thinks he does — 
a statement that is not intended to refer to you or to me 
or to anyone else in particular. I would like to know 
about the matter, but I think it will take perhaps fifty 
years to complete the experiment. I hope it will be tried." ) 

4. (a) There are almost as many types of vocational 
mathematics as there are vocations. 

(b) Beyond the essentials taught in consumers' mathe- 
matics, vocations require much less mathematics in com- 
mon than is ordinarily assumed. Is (a) substantially 
true? Can it be disproved by reference to the facts of 
vocations as now organized? Is not (b) probably true? 

( " In this question (a) is a matter of definition. When 
you get into the technical field of navigation or engineer- 
ing, for .example, the mathematics certainly becomes 
specialized. When, however, we consider the bases of 
mathematics needed in all vocations, these are not spe- 
cialized. These bases you would call prevocational. As 
to (&), I do not think your statement is true. A large 
number of vocations use formulas, slide rules, logarithms, 
trigonometry, the equation, and the like, and it is econom- 
ical to teach these to groups of students going into various 
vocations, and also for purposes of general information 
to those not going into vocations at all, taking the word 
in the usual limited sense.") 

5. Occasionally the mathematics required for a voca- 
tion can most profitably be taught in a school devoted 
chiefly to general education and attended before the voca- 
tional school. Can this be disproved? Is it important? 

("This statement seems to me to be borne out by 
experience and common sense, but I should change ' occa- 
sionally ' to ' generally.' ") 



SUMMARY 143 

6. Ordinarily, however, vocational mathematics can 
only be taught in the vocational school or in extension 
courses paralleling the learning of the vocation through 
apprenticeship. Is not this generally true? 

("No, I do not think this is true. But the whole 
thing depends on how you define ' vocational mathe- 
matics.' If you mean the large part of the mathematics 
that will be needed in sheet-metal work, for example, this 
can be taught quite as well in general classes. The 
technical mathematics required solely in this particular 
trade is limited.") 

7. Two or three kinds of prevocational courses in 
mathematics are practicable for junior high schools ; and 
an equal or greater number in senior high schools. Schools 
able to provide sufficiently large classes should offer such 
courses as electives. Is there any objection to this? 

(" There is no mathematical objection to this type of 
course if the classes are large enough. So long as you 
guard against putting any fetters on the child, chaining 
him to some particular trade when he may turn 
out to be better fitted for a college presidency, I see 
no objection.") 

8. Several kinds of general courses in mathematics 
are possible in junior and senior high schools and should 
be made available as electives where practicable. You 
would not dispute the practicability of this? Would it 
be desirable? 

("There is not only no objection to such electives 
in the senior high school, but I always advocate them 
if preceded by the junior high school. It seems to me 
very narrowing, however, to make mathematics elective 
in junior high school. I feel that we need to show the 
pupil at that time some of the general significance of 



i44 OBJECTIVES OF MATHEMATICS 

all the great branches of knowledge — mathematics 
among them.") 

9. It is agreed by competent students that mathe- 
matical studies do> not provide exceptional mental training 
towards non-mathematical fields of intellectual activity. 
Hence no mathematical study should be prescribed on 
the grounds primarily of its disciplinary value. Agreed ? 

("I agree to this, with due attention to your word 
' primarily.' I don't know of anyone who claims or has 
ever claimed otherwise. But when someone says that 
there is no mental training whatever in any serious intel- 
lectual study, I simply feel that he is stupid and that it is 
not worth while to argue with him.") 

10. It is doubtful if a course in mathematics could be 
devised of such value as a means of educational guidance 
that it should be prescribed for pupils of a given grade. 
An outline of such an alleged course would give means of 
more exact analysis. 

("I do not know what this means. Does it 
mean that we should not plan a course in mathematics in 
Grade IV?") 

11. It is very desirable that one or more distinctively 
cultural or " appreciation " courses in mathematics, suited 
to learners from twelve to eighteen years of age, should 
be evolved and offered as electives. Is this a theoretically 
possible objective? Is it practicable? 

(" Yes, it is practicable. A fairly good beginning has 
been made in the junior high schools — as good as is prac- 
ticable at present. I want to see this carried into the 
senior high school, and I believe that it will be done, not 
by the professor of education alone nor by the mathe- 
maticians alone, but by a combination of ideas. To accom- 
plish this, however, we must overcome the present feeling 



SUMMARY 145 

among mathematicians that there is nothing constructive 
in the suggestions of so many professors of education. 
This feeling is very widespread.") 

12. The following ideas held in some quarters as to 
educational values are probably illusory — at least they re- 
quire careful examination : 

(a) That study of mathematics is an exceptionally 
valuable means of giving appreciation and mastery of 
important and necessary formulae. What can be said 
against this? 

(" The question is not fairly stated. I do not know 
of anyone who makes any claim for any special ' im- 
portant and necessary formulae.' That everyone should 
know the meaning and significance of a formula in gen- 
eral, such as we find in current literature of a popular kind, 
is to me axiomatic") 

(b) That thrift, banking, investments, stocks and 
bonds, etc., as these should be taught to most persons have 
such large important mathematical elements or aspects 
as to justify their being studied chiefly as topics or minor 
subjects under mathematics. Obviously this is capable 
of fairly exact investigation? 

("This would be capable of ' fairly exact investiga- 
tion ' if honestly and intelligently attempted. The at- 
tempts made by some students to make such investigations 
seem to me, however, to be pathetically ridiculous.") 

(c) That mathematics should be studied by girls as a 
means of helping them advise their children later in the 
selection of studies by these children. I should like to see 
this critically analyzed. 

(" Yes, I should like to see it analyzed, but I wish it 
done in a broad-minded, intelligent fashion. My con- 
tention has simply been that the woman needs a general 
10 



i 4 6 OBJECTIVES OF MATHEMATICS 

all-round view of the meaning of education, as a whole, 
rather more than the working man does.") 

(d) That for pupils electing (under a flexible system) 
not to take mathematical studies there would exist a 
dearth of equally valuable alternatives. This is also 
capable of fairly exact investigation. 

( " I should like to see this investigation made by some- 
one who has not too many fixed opinions to warp 
his judgment. ") 



CHAPTER VII 

THE OBJECTIVES OF PHYSICS 

Within the last three decades physics and chemistry 
as high-school science studies have assumed a definiteness 
of organization second only to that of mathematics. But 
the defenders of these relatively modern but already for- 
malized subjects are already being forced at least to hear, 
if not to respond to, the oft-repeated challenges of those 
educational modernists who are searching for valid ob- 
jectives in education. 

What are your purposes in teaching this subject? Are 
these alleged purposes worth while? To whom and for 
what reasons? Worth while to girls? To boys? To 
boys and girls of limited capacity ? To boys heading for 
non-science-using vocations? To what extent do your 
present means and methods realize your alleged aims? 
How do you know? What are you doing to make your 
aims more clear, definite, valid? Why should you, a 
teacher of glorious American youth, a majority of whom 
will not go to college, bow your head to the Prussian au- 
tocracy (as some think), or to the benevolent despotism 
(thus others think) of college entrance standards? 

Now it is just as hard to-day to find genuine justifica- 
tions for the teaching of physics according to formula- 
tions and methods accepted in 90 per cent, of our high 
schools as it is to find such justification for Latin for 
boys, algebra for girls, or ancient history for both. Do 
not imagine that we can throw the entire blame for all 
of this back on the teachers. The complexity of educa- 
tion, and the yet undeveloped character of its basic 

147 



148 OBJECTIVES OF PHYSICS 

sciences, are in part responsible. But long before men 
knew anything about what we call the science of metal- 
lurgy they found out how to make steel — and sometimes 
very good steel — and the obligation was on them to do the 
best they could with such knowledge as they could get, 
seeing through the darkened glass. Long before men 
knew anything about the circulation of the blood, or 
bacteria or inoculations, they had tc have their grand- 
mothers and other healers and wielders of magic try to 
cure and to prevent the diseases to which the sons of man 
are heir. And some of the discoveries and practices of 
those forebears of our modern medical men were by no 
means bad, while a few of them were wonderful ; but in 
the aggregate, as we look back, how hesitating, incomplete 
and superstition-ridden were the controls and procedures 
of our faith^f olio wing ancestors, in healing the sick, tilling 
the soil, controlling natural forces, working earth's ores 
and educating their young ! 

In most departments of secondary education, we are 
still in the chrysalis stage, wrapped up in the cocoons of 
blind faiths, untested beliefs, hardened customs. In the 
nature of the case we could hardly have done better, per- 
haps. Waiting the development of some scientific cues, 
we have at least achieved some useful results on the bases 
laid by faith and preserved by custom and tradition. 

But some of us hope that the ages of faith are coming 
to a close in certain phases of this education, and that a 
period of questioning, criticism, analysis, experimentation 
and intelligent reconstruction is setting in. 

Let us not overlook the several revolutions that have 
taken place in the teaching of physics. It required an 
educational revolution to give science a place in the sec- 
ondary school curriculum at all. It required almost a 
revolution to force in the laboratory as a means supple- 



OBJECTIVES OF PHYSICS 149 

mental to the text-book, and another to force in the addi- 
tion of a series of quantitative experiments. 

But some, at least, of our gains have turned into Dead 
Sea fruit. Perhaps they were from the start too heavily 
infected with pedagogical superstition. At any rate, we 
are far from being satisfied with results as we find them 
to-day ; and we must welcome all sincere efforts to ascer- 
tain what are the sources and causes of the present un- 
satisfactory position (not from a comparative point of 
view, but from the standpoint of the educational results 
we have a right to expect) of physics. 

It is the purpose of this chapter to suggest certain 
respects in which physics teaching to-day suffers from 
faulty aim; and, as a means of initiating discussion, to 
suggest certain respects in which reconstructions of ob- 
jectives can be made, especially when secondary-school 
teachers will themselves have conceitedly taken in hand 
the fundamentally important work of determining what, 
for the various ends of education should be the standards 
of purpose, means and methods of science instruction, 
instead of waiting supinely to take their cues from the 
higher institutions. 

Suppose we take some well-known text-book of sec- 
ondary-school physics, together with an approved lab- 
oratory manual, as a kind of measure of the scope and 
kind knowledges, skills, ideals and appreciations that are 
supposed to be achieved through this study — what, after 
all, is it all really for? 

Now, of course, it is easy enough to say that these 
books summarize, in much digested form it is true, the 
acquisitions which should be made by all persons seeking 
certain opportunities, e.g., admission to higher institutions, 
or desiring certain appreciations and powers valuable 
apart from their relation to subsequent school work. 



1 50 OBJECTIVES OF PHYSICS 

But how are we to prove that these acquisitions should 
be so made? By what standards of social purpose, cul- 
tural good, economic need ? It is interesting to find how 
chary educators are of pushing inquiries in these matters. 
It is sweepingly urged that a knowledge of physics is 
essential to the prosecution of higher college studies. 
What studies ? Studies pursued to what ends ? 

It is now certain that we must reconstruct almost all 
our current standards of value of high-school subjects. 
We must endeavor to proceed from the foundations of the 
useful attainments (in the broadest sense of the word 
" useful," to include the spiritually and culturally useful 
as well as the materially useful) as shown by men and 
women in present-day society who' are substantially above 
the average as respects those qualities which, according 
to a consensus of judgment of competent critics, are 
" good " — good for the individual, and good for society. 

What do these superior persons have of the following 
powers (of execution) and capacities (for appreciation) ; 
(a) knowledge of physical facts, processes, laws, etc., 
essential to meet the requirements of the daily life usually 
encountered by all in common, whether, vocationally, they 
be housewives, farmers, motormen, sailors, stenog- 
raphers; (b) appreciation and insight of physical phe- 
nomena (especially those studied as physics) for purely 
cultural or unpractical interests' — rainbows, volcanoes, 
tides, aurora borealis, falling bodies, etc.; (c) mastery of 
those physical processes, etc., essential to effective par- 
ticipation in the common activities of electing good en- 
gineers, roadbuilders, irrigation experts, etc., to office, 
and of giving due civic supervision to their work; (d) 
appreciation of scientific methods of thinking where 
physical phenomena (of the kind studidd, not all phe- 
nomena as the upholders of the magic of formal discipline 



OBJECTIVES OF PHYSICS 151 

would have us believe) are involved; (e) mastery of the 
knowledge, skill, etc., to be derived from the study of 
physics, as required for their vocations ? 

First, then, what have the superior adults of to-day 
of these attainments? Second, have they achieved these 
powers and capacities economically or wastefully, effec- 
tively or inefficiently? Thirdly, assuming that they got 
what they have by fairly easy well-ordered processes, what 
more do we want the next generation of men, equally 
capable natively, to have ? Fourthly, what do> we want the 
next generation of men corresponding to those below the 
superior class of to-day to have? 

Through some such procedure as that implied 'above 
we could determine what, under specified conditions, we 
should teach to all, or some, of physics. Then we could 
determine, experimentally in part, what methods would 
most effectively achieve these ends. 

Within a few years, when our secondary school edu- 
cators will have seriously faced the problems of making 
all the school education of our young people from twelve 
or fourteen to eighteen years of age demonstrably worth 
while, it is predicted that the courses in physical science 
will include the following, according to the size of the 
school : (a) One or more purely cultural courses ; (b) one 
or more " general utility " courses; (c) a course to inte- 
grate with social science and (d) according to circum- 
stances, several " prevocational " courses. Let us analyze 
in some detail these prospective objectives. 

(a) Cultural courses in natural (as opposed to mental 
and social) science will be offered at intervals — possibly 
in the seventh, and again in the eleventh, grades. We are 
searching for the goals here suggested in our various 
experimental developments of " General Science " — which 
should properly be called " General Natural Science," 



152 OBJECTIVES OF PHYSICS 

since there are surely also fields of mental and of 
social science. 

We do not know yet how to organize or administer 
a " cultural " course in science. We want it to appeal and 
interest, but we are afraid to make it " easy." We do not 
realize that most truly cultural courses must be pursued 
in the same spirit of zest and interest that we now experi- 
ence in traveling 1 comfortably in new lands, reading our 
favorite fiction, or that normal boys experience in scout- 
ing, real craft work, or reading the literature of adventure. 
Because of our ignorance, we commonly make science 
teaching a process of forcible feeding — often of comesti- 
bles that are not expected to be digested for several years. 
We wonder why our youth take to science very much as 
children take to unpalatable medicine. 

The cultural courses suggested here need not occupy 
an entire year, and they might just as well be elective, as 
prescription works badly in this field of " appreciation " 
education. Ordinarily the work of these courses cannot 
be based on one text, even of iooo pages. Rather we 
need a library of books about volcanoes, planets, tropical 
animals, electricity, deep mines, sul>sea wonders, aero- 
planes, digestive fluids, explosives, selective plant breed- 
ing, wireless telegraphy. Furthermore, we cannot expect 
all the pupils to keep nicely abreast in class work. They 
will come together for conference, at which those who 
have something worth communicating will be given oppor- 
tunity and facilities to* that end. A zealous teacher will 
often indicate the range of opportunities for reading, 
observation, problem solving, experimentation, project 
work — and he will help steer the most difficult of it all. 

What are the expected products of these cultural 
courses? Chiefly those poorly analyzed but invaluable 
products vaguely described as " interest excited, " " curi- 



OBJECTIVES OF PHYSICS 153 

osities satisfied," " intellectual experience," " apprecia- 
tions," (of the wealth of things, of the enlightening 
powers of science, of the vocational opportunities open in 
scientific fields, etc., etc.), which are rarely the outcome 
of present formal methods. 

(b) The " common " life of most of us as individuals, 
quite apart from the requirements of our vocations, and 
chiefly in connection with our " consuming " activities or 
activities of non-vocational utilization, are in a measure 
capable of being made more comprehensible and service- 
able by some (not many) applications of knowledge of 
physical science. In personal hygiene are some oppor- 
tunities. In buying clothing, furniture, and houses, in 
reading books and newspapers, in eating food, in using 
light and heat — and, possibly, in many other directions, it 
may prove possible to lay better foundations for wise 
action than are now provided by our schools, even by a 
certain amount of obligatory study of special kinds of 
physics. But before we begin making prescriptions, we 
should know what we are about — which is not the 
case now. 

(c) Similarly, we probably need a little specific knowl- 
edge of physics to* intercalate with our social science as a 
means of making us the voters (that is, cooperative em- 
ployers of public service) that we should be. What that 
science should be, and with what degree of intensiveness 
it should be studied, and under what conditions, we have 
only the vaguest notions at present. But I am sure the 
field is there waiting to be discovered and developed. 

(d) Finally, our larger secondary schools, at least, 
should offer courses in " prevocational " physics. The 
term " prevocational " is here used only to designate those 
studies which may conveniently be offered in a non-voca- 
tional school and which are demonstrably preparatory to, 



iS4 OBJECTIVES OF PHYSICS 

and functional in, a vocational school or vocation later 
to be entered. Studies genuinely prevocational are also 
only those which have no other important or significant 
or at least primary values. Hence trigonometry taken in 
high schools by prospective engineers is prevocational, 
while ordinary English clearly is not. 

What are possible lines of "prevocational " physics? 
Can we disentangle from the range and wealth of physical 
science units that are obviously prevocational for, re- 
spectively, prospective: (a) gardeners; (b) electrical 
engineers ; (c) homemakers on budgets of less than $2000 
per year; (d) " dryland " farmers; (e) workers with gas 
engines; (/) stenographers; (g) sailors, etc.? 

Can we so guide students that the majority, at least, 
electing these courses, will not be wasting their time? 
And can we present the work of these courses by methods 
so exacting ana! practical that the contributions made shall 
be important as stages towards vocational fitness? And 
can we see to it, that we can SO' teach these subjects that 
as secondary results, by-products or as means to known 
further ends, will come stern discipline, severe mental 
training, positive appreciations of scientific method as 
these apply in, and associate legitimately with, the par- 
ticular vocations respectively to which the subjects desig- 
nated above are prevocational? If we can do these things 
we shall have made educational contributions of no 
mean importance. 

If we are going to help find these prevocational sub- 
jects, we should separate ourselves first from most of the 
established traditions of physics teaching. They mislead 
us in this region badly. Probably we could get best 
results by taking our cues from recent developments in 
vocational education in the search for effective " short 
units "of training and instruction. 



OBJECTIVES OF PHYSICS 155 

The spirit of the age is giving you and me carte 
blanche in the reorganization of our ideals, theories, prin- 
ciples and proposed programs of secondary education. It 
will not, however, permit us to upset a school system, a 
school or a program in process of application until we 
shall have done hard thinking (first individual, then 
joint), experimentation (on a scale and under condi- 
tions that will not work harm), and documentation of 
findings. The standpatters and the revolutionary anar- 
chists in education are both pestilential. What can we 
do somewhere between these extremes? But "self- 
determination " (through collective action of the service 
group to whom society has delegated functions organ- 
ized for particular ends) is essential — to physics teachers, 
to high-school teachers, and to high-school principals no 
less than to " small nations," or peoples reared in the 
shadows of autocracy. . 



CHAPTER VIII 
SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE FINE ARTS 

Men long ago sought to draw distinctions between 
the " useful " and the " fine " arts — the practical arts 
whereby we live and the aesthetic arts whereby we are en- 
riched. The distinction is not now generally approved ; it 
is too suggestive of aristocracies, of artificialities. It 
seems unfair to deny that the useful can also be fine or 
that the beautiful can also serve great uses. 

Nevertheless, sociology needs categories of the kind 
suggested by the old classifications. It needs them be- 
cause they stand for certain unlike facts in the objective 
life of mankind. The sociologist cannot hold that the 
beautiful may not also in the highest sense be the useful — 
since he recognizes that at various stages in its evolution 
upward society has used the aesthetic sensibilities as pow- 
erful levers of progress. 

But he is forced to distinguish the aesthetic values from 
various other kinds of values, partly for the reason that 
they serve different and not infrequently opposed ends. 
Especially is he now concerned with these questions here 
in America, because there exists probabilities that the 
powers of the fine arts over human life are declining 
rather than growing. He is especially impressed with 
the waning powers of the aesthetic arts in the major con- 
cerns of social life. 

It would appear that sociological writers — except, pos- 
sibly, Herbert Spencer — have fought shy of the difficult 
subject of art. 1 One of our greatest humanists, Tolstoi, 

1 This rule, of course, is not wholly without exceptions, e.g., Ross : 
" Social Control," ch. xx ; or Hayes : " Sociology," pp. 499, seq. 

156 



PRESENT DEMANDS 157 

has, however, somewhat compensated for their omissions. 
To the educational sociologist the place of art in life is 
of the utmost importance, especially because contemporary 
social aspirations tend strongly towards giving art a large 
place in education. But our programs of art education 
will necessarily long remain as indeterminate, unsubstan- 
tial, and hobby-ridden as they have been during the last 
fifty years, if we cannot agree upon some findings, pro- 
visional if none better can be had, as to the social values 
that are to be expected from the various forms of art use. 

I. PRESENT DEMANDS 

Various critical Americans, aided and abetted fre- 
quently by visitors from abroad, have for many years been 
insisting that this country sadly needs more and better 
art. Our inartistic life has been pitied, denounced, de- 
rided, made the object of " uplift." At first, with the 
confidence of successful frontier folk, we refused to 
believe that our conditions were as bad as our critics 
imagined. We were wealthy and reasonably happy. We 
had national health, and ours was opportunity. We were 
not keenly conscious of wants which we could not satisfy. 
We knew little about art, and that little often suggested 
scroll work, triviality, meretriciousness, even refined sen- 
suality. Artists in all lines as well as their followers 
among the non- working women who were coming to be 
the decorations of our rich commercial life, we hardly 
pretended to understand, but we were sure that we held 
them and their works in small esteem. 

Our critics, however, have achieved their objects. We 
are no longer complacent over our insensitiveness to art 
and our art-lacking surroundings. We have become self- 
conscious, abashed, convicted of many serious aesthetic 
shortcomings ; and we are now eager to amend our ways. 



158 SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE FINE ARTS 

We have resolved to give art a fair chance, and to require 
that our sons and daughters shall not be, as we were, 
deprived of opportunities to have the satisfactions and to 
exhibit the cultivation that are alleged to come from see- 
ing, hearing, feeling (and even tasting and smelling) 
those things which superior judgment and taste call 
" artistic." We have been gratified when millionaires 
gave us art galleries. We have been glad to make it pos- 
sible for our wives and daughters and a few of our sons 
to travel in Italy, France, and Belgium where " art " was 
to< be found in largest quantities. Our women's clubs have 
taken the matter of self-culture in art seriously. Amer- 
icans no longer have, or at least express, sympathy with 
the Puritan's pose as to the sinfulness of catering to* 
aesthetic sensibilities. 

We have tried especially to develop art education, in 
the more inclusive sense of the term, as a part of our 
general education. During the last fifty years popular 
demand has forced into school and college curricula quite 
generally much English literature, and some drawing and 
music. Small but influential groups of our more ambi- 
tious citizens have also at times succeeded in having taught 
in the regular schools, or in special schools and classes 
organized for the purpose, dramatics, artistic dancing, 
painting, modeling, artistic craftsmanship, home decora- 
tion, and landscape gardening. To each and all of these 
newly awakened interests Europe has contributed, along 
with a few first-class exponents, a horde of self -promoting 
avaricious exploiters of popular credulity and private 
wealth. Schools and cults and fads have flourished. The 
decorative women of the rich, the idle and sterile women 
of the apartment-house dwellers, the ambitious daughters 
(and a few sons) of families rising rapidly to higher 
standards of living, the free lances among our intellectu- 



PRESENT DEMANDS 159 

ally emancipated womanhood, all these have contributed in 
America toward a vast, collective, conscious striving for 
more " art " in life, some release from barbarity and vul- 
garism, some translation hither of European or 
Japanese standards and methods of execution and capaci- 
ties for appreciation. 

In some instances the results of this striving have been 
wholesome and profitable, if judged by their effects upon 
certain small classes or groups of people, in the way of 
contributing to their collective good-will, earnestness, sin- 
cerity, unaffectedness, and standards of moral conduct. 
We know of a few centers where the cultivation of music 
has ministered to rather than detracted from neighbodi- 
ness, social purity, and simplicity. Occasional groups of 
craftsmen can be found whose members are genuine men 
and women, unaffected by avarice, jealousy, or besetting 
impulse to pose. Here and there are moderately gifted 
writers who have resisted the temptation to produce wares 
for the largest market, and who have nevertheless been 
discovered by a moderate circle of appreciative readers. 

But it must be confessed that, viewed in the large, 
the results of our great campaign of education and uplift 
in matters artistic appear so far to be disappointing. As 
users of literature the American people do not yet seem 
greatly to prefer the better to the worse. We expend 
millions for short stories and longer novels, and we lionize 
the writer of a "best seller " ; but we provide a poor mar- 
ket and little appreciation for the genuine poet and essay- 
ist. We certainly support the drama generously (if we 
include under that term moving-picture art), but we make 
no marked demand either for repeated presentations of 
the great classical dramas or for those modern dramas 
that exhibit originality of conception and artistic work- 
manship. Some hundreds of millions of dollars are ex- 



160 SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE FINE ARTS 

pended annually to provide music in America, but only a 
small portion of this is paid to support other than fugitive 
and tawdry stuff. Our millionaires in a few cities gen- 
erously support the opera, but whether from genuine 
desire for the art or from motives of vanity and display, 
it is at times hard to say. We dance much, but, except 
when momentarily moved by the appeal of fashion, we are 
cool toward folk-dancing and art-dancing. The plastic 
and graphic arts are everywhere taught in public and 
private schools, and hundreds of our young people of 
real or imagined talent annually set out to become painters, 
sculptors, or architects. But our largest expenditures as 
a people for art products embodying form and color go 
to magazine publisher, advertiser, bric-a-brac manufac- 
turer, and the long line of caterers to the various appe- 
tites for bodily decoration. 

Notwithstanding the growth of wealth available for 
the satisfaction of the less pressing needs of life, and an 
undoubted desire on the part of educators, and a consid- 
erable portion of the public for better things artistically, 
it seems to be true that as a people we are advancing little 
if at all as respects " love of the best." But those author- 
ities who at times despair of American taste seem almost 
equally pessimistic regarding prospects in other countries. 
Are we not told that modernizing of Japan has ruined the 
fine craftsmanship and cheapened the public taste of 
that country? Applied art makes slow progress in Eng- 
land in spite of the millions expended by the agencies that 
first grouped themselves around South Kensington. Ger- 
many, aspiring to conquer a world's commerce, plunges 
into vast schemes of art education, the quality and per- 
manency of the results of which are seriously challenged 
even at home. France continues to give to the world a 



PRESENT DEMANDS 161 

profusion of fine- and applied-art products, but her schools 
are distracted by cults, and the social mission or signifi- 
cance of even her best art remains yet a matter of un- 
certainty and debate. Germany maintains perhaps her 
standards of musical appreciation, but, if her best critics 
are right, drama, poetry, fiction, and dancing certainly 
tend there as elsewhere toward lower levels as regards 
both production and appreciation. And all of this in face 
of the unquestionable fact that the whole civilized world 
is (or was before 19 14) possessed of vastly more leisure, 
wealth, and education than ever before ! 

To educators, publicists, and statesmen, as well as to 
all persons gifted with sensitiveness toward things ar- 
tistic, it is a serious and disturbing matter that art as 
regards its evolution and social vitality seems to be so 
much in the doldrums. What are the causes of this con- 
dition, and what does it portend? In our public schools 
alone we now expend millions of dollars annually in trying 
to teach our children to appreciate and desire the better 
things in literary, musical, graphic, plastic, and terpsi- 
chorean art. Are we doomed always to find the ground 
slipping away from under our feet, and to discover that 
we are simply modern Mrs. Partingtons sweeping back 
in utter futility the waves of printed pictures, " movies," 
" canned music/' hackwritten fiction, hotel dancing, and 
factory-multiplied artistic " utilities " ? Must we continue 
to find, indeed, that as one of the penalties for our sins 
our art leaders and spokesmen have themselves been af- 
flicted with a confusion of tongues, and have scattered 
into the wilderness of conflicting cults, irrational coun- 
sels, and wilful blindnesses to the essential characteristics 
of the period in which we live? 

The situation is therefore a serious one if we admit 
11 



i62 SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE FINE ARTS 

that the assumptions which are commonly made as to the 
social significance and essential need of high standards of 
art production and appreciation in civilized society are 
indeed correct. But we must not forget that these as- 
sumptions are usually derived from a historical considera- 
tion of other civilizations than our own, and chiefly from 
those representing other stages of evolution than the pres- 
ent in our own. May it not be possible that occidental 
civilization has reached a stage in its development when 
the general social need of art of good quality, at least in 
some of the forms which have counted most in human- 
izing man and upbuilding societies, is less vital and 
compelling than was formerly the case ? Perhaps the func- 
tions of art in ministering to the primal needs of society 
are not what they once were, and so, as a consequence, 
while society may still be willing to spend of its energies 
and resources freely on art, it now refuses to take that 
art seriously because it cannot make of it a means toward 
realizing the more serious and worthy things of life. 
Strong men decline to make the production of art works 
a career, although they are willing to see their daughters 
follow it as a lightsome and not too prolonged vocation. 
When in need of recreation or a light avocation, these 
same strong men are likely to turn to art for its sedative 
and diverting qualities; or when, with wealth accumu- 
lated and leisure available, they seek outlet for unexpended 
energies, they may find in art gratifying opportunities for 
patronage, self-education, and public service. 

2. THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 

To the student of history or, more broadly, social evo- 
lution the fundamental importance of the various aesthetic 
arts that make appeal to and through the emotional nature 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 163 

of man is apparent. 2 Homo sapiens conies into the world 
equipped with instincts which cause him to' react strongly 
to the stimuli, among others, which these arts have been 
invented to provide. One kind of music can move him to 
worship, another to fight, another to love, and a fourth to 
work in concert. Perhaps a fifth, sedative and lulling, 
can give his jangled nerves much-needed rest. The drama 
at its best becomes a means of making men passionately 
aspire after or despise the forms of conduct in themselves 
or others, toward which end it is the desire of dramatist 
and actor to move them. Through painting and sculpture 
have been communicated countless messages to men and 
to women, young and old, who' could receive vivid sug- 
gestion and direction through no other medium. Epic 
and lyric, the finished evolutionary products of recital, 
chant, and folk-song, long served as vital means of dis- 
seminating and socializing ideals, lores, sentiments, and 
percepts. Dancing at its best was doubtless long a valu- 
able means of symbolizing for peoples only part articulate, 
various forms of cooperation, including those of defense, 
worship, and mating. Gracefulness of design and beauty 
of decoration, applied to the furnishings and utensils 
wherewith life must be lived and work done, served to give 
definiteness of standards and permanency of associations 
to the still plastic sensibilities and inclinations that make 
for domesticity, acceptance of routine, pride of craftsman- 
ship, self-sacrifice, accumulation of wealth, and respect 
for unseen powers. 

2 A sharp distinction must, of course, be made between " art," or 
" aesthetic arts " and " the arts." The latter (as " practical," " indus- 
trial," " mechanic," and "useful " arts, having to do with man's need 
of obvious utilities) are, in spite of similarity of names, often remote 
from " arts," and especially " fine " or " pure " art. The fundamental 
quality of " art " as here considered consists in its appeal to aesthetic 
sensibilities, and as a consequence of the appeal thus made its power 
stimulate, modify, or repress specific tendencies toward behavior, 
conduct or action, immediate or ultimate, individual or social. 



164 SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE FINE ARTS 

If we possessed sufficient data whereon to base sound 
conclusions as to social evolution, we should probably 
find that many forms of art had, during the long periods 
when they possessed great social vitality, a very large 
" survival value." That is, social groups that developed 
widespread and keen appreciation of these forms of art, 
closely accompanied by the demand for, and summoning 
forth of, great producers o<f the strong and vivid things in 
such art, other things being equal, possessed thereby great 
advantages in the struggle for existence as against other 
groups not thus reinforced and fortified. Under primitive 
and elemental conditions of society at least, all forms of 
cooperative action and of social control of the individual 
in the interest of social behavior seem to involve and to 
require abundant means of making direct and strong 
emotional appeals, such as art, among, other agencies, 
provides. Song, drum, and trumpet bring men together 
for war (doubtless the earliest crucial form of coopera- 
tion) ; chantey and tattoo make toil in concert endurable 
and even joyous; pipe and chant mold the spirit for 
worship. Carved, painted, and woven decoration have 
served to give verity and tangibility to legend and tradi- 
tion, and thus to< promote like-mindedness among clans 
and tribes and sects; while painting and statuary com- 
municate ideals and sentiments for which words are as yet 
inadequate. Probably all forms of persistent ,and elab- 
orated art (confining the term chiefly to those products 
of human skill which are characterized by the emotional 
rather than the intellectual appeal which they make) have 
indeed had for long periods a large " survival value/' 
They were therefore vigorously approved and cultivated 
because of vague recognition of that fact — such recogni- 
tion itself being likewise a slow product of intuition 
and experience. 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 165 

But do not needs similar to those confronting early 
societies for close cooperation and generous mutual aid 
still exist to-day? Do not these needs grow daily more 
intense and more pressing? Are not conditions such 
to-day, especially in all civilized countries, that the de- 
mand, conscious or unconscious, for all the forms of 
appeal which art can make or reinforce is waxing in vol- 
ume and intensity? In the complications and interde'- 
pendencies of modern society do we not more than ever 
require vigorous use of all social means that will integrate 
groups of men for work, defense, worship, and govern- 
ment; that will insure the right formation as well as 
stability of family life; and that will promote social 
integration and concerted effort generally ? Can we allow 
to fall into disuse any instrument by means of which the 
imagination, ideals, sentiments, appreciations and habit- 
ual attitudes of the individual can be so shaped that he may 
give to society the desirable conduct under all the involved 
and obscured conditions which render possible innumer- 
able kinds of behavior, social or anti-social ? 

In brief, nearly all art had in the past quite definite, 
even if imperfectly manifest, social functions; it gave 
direction and reinforcement to the great social forces, 
those that made for the cohesion, unity, strength, per- 
sistence and wholesomeness of society, and, thereby, as 
a rule, for the ultimate self-realization of the individual. 
This was conspicuously the case with all " great " art — 
the art that, though sometimes at first emanating from, 
and patronized by, a few, ultimately appealed to the thou- 
sands, the art that was given wide publicity in places of 
assembly, that received approval and support at once of 
rulers and of ruled. Has art to-day, or can it, in its nobler 
manifestations, be made to have those same definite social 
functions? The social forces that thus once utilized and 



166 SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE FINE ARTS 

magnified art are still operative, certainly, but do they 
or can they make use of great art, noble art, serious art, 
as necessary means ? In a fundamental sense the answers 
to these questions will probably interpret for us in part 
the present status and the probable future of the higher 
forms of art in America and in other countries controlled 
by the conditions and requirements of modern civilization. 
We must ascertain whether art still possesses the qualities 
which under present-day conditions, give it definite func- 
tioning possibilities in strengthening and orienting the 
social forces that, operating through the sentiments, un- 
derstandings, and ideals of individuals, produce the society 
which weathers storms, survives, and ministers to the end 
of guaranteeing " life more abundantly " — the final 
known test of civilizations. 

It is the belief of the writer that an examination of 
those forms of social activity which are most intimately 
involved in the survival and expansion of civilized 
societies will show an increasing dependence upon what 
may be called the helpings of science as contrasted with 
the helpings of art. Art still has its place in life, but not 
the prominent, proud, and glorious place it once had. Art 
can no longer lead ; it must follow. It can no longer com- 
mand ; to make itself acceptable it must rather divert and 
entertain. In the great works and in the momentous crises 
of life man is more and more to be supported and rein- 
forced by what he has accumulated in and for himself 
of scientific knowledge of the world, of assured insight 
into his own powers, and of definite mastery of natural 
and social forces. In considering these hypotheses let us 
examine successively a few of the fields of human conduct 
and activity in which the social functions of art seem 
to have diminished in comparative importance while the 
dependence upon science has increased. 



HISTORIC VALUES 167 

3. HISTORIC VALUES 

The problem of obtaining concerted action for war 
has always taxed to the utmost men's capacities for co- 
operation. At every point in the recorded history of man 
we find him using music, dancing, bodily decoration, 
sculpture, painting, legend, poetry, oratory, drama — in 
fact, ail manner of appeals to the emotions through the 
senses — to arouse the combative instincts and impulses 
and to produce cooperative fighting qualities with their 
accompaniments of endurance, loyalty to leaders, com- 
radeship, and self-sacrifice which make possible the over- 
coming of enemies and the survival of the victors. When 
the defense of nationality is at stake, when the area over 
which concerted action must take place is large and the 
time of action long, the uses of art in producing and sus- 
taining the moral and even spiritual qualities become mar- 
velously varied and complicated. Heroic painting and 
sculpture, patriotic song, spirit-stirring music, ideal-arous- 
ing tale, and exalted oratory are all enlisted. The extent 
to which in very recent times this appeal to art as a vehicle 
of call to action has been made, sometimes deliberately, 
sometimes only as a revival of old customs and the belated 
expression of half-buried instincts, is one evidence of the 
persistence down into modern life of art- forms as a means 
of social strength and survival. 

Nevertheless, though war to-day is a no less serious 
business than ever before, it is clear that in it, prag- 
matically considered, the various art-forms no longer re- 
tain their relative importance. Men no longer dance to 
the tomtom to arouse the fury required for the raid. They 
do not march to battle to the sound of trumpet, drum, and 
fife. They sing songs in the trenches, but, if report be true, 
these are not songs of rage, valor, or exaltation. Our 



168 SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE FINE ARTS 

soldiers must now discard the ornamenting sword, shako, 
epaulette, showy-colored uniform, and decorative helmet. 
Rifles and cannon no longer bear inscriptions delicately 
traced and beflowered. We say, indeed, that war has 
lost its glamor, its appeal to the ecstatic and heroic emo- 
tions. Smokeless powder, long-range gun, spying area- 
plane, mine, and barbed-wire snare have rendered war 
a form of activity in which the simple emotional appeals 
have necessarily a subordinate place. Clarity of under- 
standing, trained intelligence, stored knowledge of scien- 
tific procedure, coldly clear vision— these are the personal 
powers that are brought to the fore. Patriotism must be 
identified with the clearly understood higher forms of self- 
and family-interest, else it has little meaning in and for 
modern conflict. We say modern war evokes no great 
poetry, perhaps little great fiction. Of course not; but as 
the price of national existence and individual liberty it 
evokes science^ organization, method, prearrangement, 
calculation — the unemotional things of life. To the build- 
ing up of all of these, the art- forms that strike chiefly and 
immediately toward the keener emotions and sharper 
sensibilities have little to contribute. Action must now 
be based relatively more on technical comprehension, less 
on intense and personal feeling. A background of ideal, 
shot with sentiment and emotion, there must always be, 
of course — perhaps more penetrating, pervasive, and en- 
during than ever before — but this is something not greatly 
to be affected by the crude appeals which the simple, strik- 
ing, forth-right art-forms of the past have made. It 
grows from social understanding, the perceived ramifica- 
tions of socialized self-interest, the comprehended signifi- 
cance of material aid and fair play. " With the songs of 
the North, the South would have won " in the Civil War, 
someone has said. Well, it would have made a great dif- 



HISTORIC VALUES 169 

ference a thousand years ago, some difference fifty years 
ago, but probably none in the wars of to-morrow. 

Art, at least as we have thus far defined and known 
it, has a diminishing place in war. It yields to science. 
Enlistment is hastened, it is true, by gaudy and imagin- 
ative posters; marching recruits sing " Tipperary " ; 
"canned music " is welcomed in the trenches ; and Kip- 
ling's tales furnish pleasant relief from tedium. Art for 
diversion, relief, as a sedative, yes ; but as a means of in- 
spiration, as a force that counts in the final tale — hardly. 

At certain stages in the evolution of societies it is 
religion that has evoked the most potent forms of art, 
especially those that affect and move the multitude. Appeal 
to, and propitiation of, respected and feared dieties have 
always served to bring and hold men together. Worship 
in common has doubtless always had a large survival value 
for those groups which supported and controlled it effec- 
tively. In the various forms of worship, art with its pow- 
erful appeals to the feelings has commonly played a large 
part. The unseen gods in imagined forms have been given 
representation in every kind of plastic material. The 
most cunning builders, craftsmen, and decorators have 
been employed to beautify places and accessories of wor- 
ship. Vocal and instrumental music in a thousand forms 
has been used in praise of, and appeal to, the gods, and as 
a means of drawing others into the circle of worshipers. 
Religious revival and Salvation Army campaign always 
utilize in full the strong, simple arts which make direct 
emotional appeal. 

And yet is it not fundamentally true that noble art or 
strong art or fine art is less urgently demanded and less 
vitally used, on the whole, in worship to-day than among 
the people in prescientific stages of development ? Those 
religious organizations which reached their full fruition 



i7o SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE FINE ARTS 

prior to the last half -century still retain in large part their 
historic instrumentalities, but it is probable that the more 
emotion-arousing of these steadily diminish in potency. 
If this is so, what is the explanation? Undoubtedly, again, 
the cause must be found in the pervasive spread of scien- 
tific thinking, rational action, and an increasing demand 
for intelligible sanctions for social behavior. Among 
civilized peoples deities become more remote, more ab- 
stract, less anthropomorphic. We think of them less 
than formerly as possessing sensibilities to be appealed to 
through beauty of voice, dance, incense, decoration. 
Churches change tradition slowly, so it is not possible for 
us accurately to estimate the actual social vitality of art 
applied as a means of worship to-day among peoples who 
have become accustomed in other relations to view a sub- 
stantial part of their universe in terms of the known, the 
scientific, the personal. But one notes the social activities 
of the modern church, the practical character of its archi- 
tecture, the professionalizing of its music, the appeals 
to understanding in its sermons, and the tendency toward 
the merely decorative in its trappings, and concludes that 
the great arts of appeal to the emotional nature play a 
diminishing part inevitably in modern worship. 

The extent to which art was used as a means of stimu- 
lating primitive man to prolonged and arduous work is not 
well known. On the sea and in harvest field chantey, 
rowers' song, and field melodies have survived to yes- 
terday. The " house-raising " festival and " husking 
bee " are probably survivals of social devices toward com- 
pany effort which were once widely used. During the 
thousands of years when men were learning to hunt, fish, 
herd, till, harvest, clear forests, raise houses, and build 
roads together, innumerable devices making aesthetic ap- 
peal were certainly evolved. That festival, folk-song, 



HISTORIC VALUES 171 

legend, drama, dance, and pageant were favorite means is 
evidenced by the historic remains which can still be 
studied. It is said that forethought and thrift among 
present-day tribes of tropical regions can best be pro- 
duced through holding in prospect reward of gaily printed 
cloths, bodily decorations, perfumes, and the music of 
the phonograph. Our European male ancestors gave much 
heed to the decorations of their persons with bright-col- 
ored trappings which to-day survive only in the dress uni- 
form of the military officer, but which, curiously enough, 
seem also recrudescent among the ceremonials of those 
who most nearly constitute an American intelligenzia, 
namely, our college faculties. It has been no light task 
for societies in the colder regions of the earth to make 
of primitive, individualistic, labor-hating man a social 
citizen, cooperating readily, toiling persistently, and sav- 
ing thriftily ; and in this task art once played a large part. 

But it does so no longer. Men seldom sing as they 
work. Festivals no longer directly crown a recognized 
task accomplished. Providence is cultivated by other 
means than folk-song and drama. Our boys are con- 
temptuous of the seductive tales of thrifty and indus- 
trious exemplars. 

Yet it is indubitable that we now possess in larger 
measure than ever nearly all of the social virtues that have 
to do with economic well-being. How are we producing 
these virtues in each generation ? Largely through appeals 
to understanding, to conscious self-interest in the individ- 
ual; and also* through organization of labor under the 
wage system and through the segregation of economic op- 
portunities — hunting-grounds, fishing-streams, nut-bear- 
ing trees, tillable land — by means of private ownership. 
Only in time of crisis or revolt does the " Marseillaise " of 
the expatriated stir the passions to demand a new eco- 



i 7 2 SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE FINE ARTS 

nomic adjustment, and bring men into step for a new form 
of cooperative effort. Doubtless the passion for the pos- 
session and ownership of that which makes aesthetic ap- 
peal — the jewel, the gown, the handsome saddle, the fine 
house — still lures men and women to toil even slavishly. 
But does the conscience of the country approve such use 
of the aesthetic response? Does it not rather frown upon 
it, as we frown upon that taste which seeks gratification 
in perfumery? 

The suitable mating of men and women, so funda- 
mental to sound social growth, has also involved histor- 
ically the employment of every known form of art appeal. 
Love song, incense, body decoration, poem, dance, tale 
of precarious courtship, and the drama of passion or 
affection, all these, in multifarious form, evoked, irradi- 
ated, and brought to fruition the primal sex impulses, 
thus beautifying, ennobling, and stabilizing the various 
stages of the approach of men and women to, and union 
in, the family relationship. Can it be possible that in this 
field of human activity, too, art tends to lose its potency 
as a means to the realization of purposes socially 
worth while? 

It is certainly a fact that the use of these art media in 
the preliminaries to human mating (otherwise marriage 
and parenthood) is diminishing in civilized groups. In 
the upbuilding of those types of family life that must con- 
stitute the sure foundations of a sound society we see 
everywhere displayed an increasing rationality, cool un- 
derstanding, and intelligent regard for consequences to 
the individual and to society. Understanding men and 
women do not to-day, as a rule, lay the foundations of 
family life in disregard of economic, hygienic, and other 
social considerations; consequently they affect less, and 
yield themselves less to, the various forms of emotional 



HISTORIC VALUES 173 

appeal and stimulus of which our more naive progenitors 
made such use. 

We do still, indeed, expend time and energy heavily on 
forms of art which seem intimately associated with mating 
and other expressions of the sex instinct. We have the 
unending rivalries of our women in decorating and orna- 
menting their persons, ends to the subserving of which 
they have drafted some of the most highly trained of the 
craftsmanships of jewelers, hair-dressers, weavers, gar- 
ment-makers, and pharmacists. The elaborate artistry of 
the stage in its ballets, vaudeville songs, and " modern " 
dramas seems to center chiefly in cavortings about, and 
lubricities with, the sex life. The graphic arts applied 
as adjuncts to advertising and story-telling also do much 
to reinforce the sex appeal. Opera, " canned " and cham- 
ber music, dancing, fiction, and even modern modes of 
travel and outdoor recreation all seem permeated with 
endless varieties of the longings, obsessions, dairyings, and 
unwholesome effluvia of the primal instincts which are 
basal to the family life. Where marriage is arranged by 
parents — marriages of prudence — art flowerings seem to 
be developed chiefly to elicit and adorn wayward 
coquetries and illicit unions. Even the short story and the 
novel, to-day the most vital of the forms of art interpret- 
ing, irradiating, refining, and inciting the primal sex and 
sociability instincts toward the complex relationships in- 
volved in family groups, are disproportionately devoted to 
the unfortunate short-circuitings, the abnormalities, and 
the perversions of the mating impulse. 

But though we are often oppressed by the variety and 
magnitude of these developments, we must recognize that 
in a country like the United States they are far from 
being of fundamental importance. We should realize that 
these various forms of art-based activity are in part but 



i74 SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE FINE ARTS 

elaborated manifestations and derivations of the play 
activities (including the sports of hunting and competing) 
possible to a prosperous people ; and in part the manifesta- 
tions of a pervasive morbidity always found in societies 
where individual prosperity and complicated social or- 
ganization rapidly replace conditions of frugal life and 
simple group structure. 

In other words, though we may seem to give art a large 
place in the fundamental and enduring mating activities 
of modern civilized society, such is not in reality the case. 
We leave the exercise of art in large part to the hangers- 
on, the philanderers, the " play boys," the self-seekers, the 
habitues of the purlieus, of modern society. These natur- 
ally demand little in the way of madonna pictures, serene 
love songs, tales of " true love," simple gownings, dramas 
of childhood, folk-dance; the multifarious forms of art 
which they e^voke and reward are flaunted on the " White 
Way " of every city. In the meantime, the family as an 
institution survives and becomes more effective; in spite 
of the misgivings of those of us who see it chiefly under 
the artificial conditions of large cities, it is probably be- 
coming more wholesome, more socially serviceable each 
year, as judged by the final standards of its excellence, 
namely, as an agency for bringing a reasonable number 
of children to competence for membership in the society of 
adults. A constantly larger proportion of men and women 
enter upon the family relationship with open eyes, fuller 
mutual understanding, and stronger determination to 
make their lives count well for self-development and right 
parenthood. In their mating, reason, understanding, and 
even science play an increasing part; they cannot afford 
to yield themselves to the emotional incitements and point- 
ings which the art of to-day even in its rare nobler forms 
can make. Only the irresponsible ne'er-do-well dances 



NEW VALUES 175 

himself into marriage; only the silly she- fool embarks un- 
thinkingly on motherhood, unguided by reasoned consid- 
eration of its demands and responsibilities. Art in its 
currently known forms cannot serve well as a means to the 
intellect-guided, affection-based unions required and in 
growing degree found to-day — such seems to be the ver- 
dict of those who contribute most to the making of sound 
family life. 

4. NEW VALUES 

Defense, worship, work, mating — these represent four 
of the fundamental forms of activity which at all stages 
of human evolution have been essential to survival and 
progress. The various forms of art have been freely used 
in the past as means of organizing, intensifying, enlarging, 
and giving persisting significance and fruit fulness to these 
activities. The evidence seems to indicate that in all these 
major fields art as a means tends steadily to be replaced 
by what is here to be called science as a means — that is, 
the organized and tested knowledges and instrumentalities 
of science. 

Are there then no other spheres of human activity in 
which art has played and can still play a vital and im- 
portant part? 

It seems to the writer that as far back into the origins 
of society as we can go we find the beginnings of at least 
three minor social functions of art which have continued 
vitally to persist and even develop into the present, and 
which seem to promise still more extended developments 
in the future. These will be called here, respectively, the 
recreative, the advertising, and the refining functions of 
art in social life. These deserve to be called derivative, 
secondary, or minor activities as contrasted with the four 
groups of activities analyzed above, because they are in- 



1 76 SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE FINE ARTS 

volved much more with the enrichment or softening of 
life than with group survival and fundamental progress. 

Having met and passed crises of passion, strain, and 
change of fortune, man seeks to recreate himself, to re- 
cover from the effects of too intense or too prolonged 
or too painful activity. He seeks diverting or avocational 
activities. These demands of the active spirit give rise to 
vital forms of art which satisfy aesthetic craving without 
unduly straining the emotional nature. The grief-stricken 
turn to the solacing song and the comforting music of 
instruments; the wearied muscle worker, resting, recre- 
ates himself with light literature, diverting music, moving 
picture, stage pleasantries, boon companionship, and the 
coarser satisfactions o>f drink, food, narcotic, and rev- 
elry; while the tired brain-worker, also making demands 
for soothing and diverting music, show, story, picture, 
dance, and food catering adds thereto effective demands 
for travel, (dub companionship, museums, sports, and, 
when financially able, building, "gentleman" farming, 
and collecting, in many of which activities he wants 
"taste," elements of the artistic, harmonies of form, color, 
sound, and thought. He does not want, in fact he is likely 
violently to resent, serious drama, " high-brow " litera- 
ture, and elaborately architectural music. As for architec- 
ture and painting, when presented for serious contempla- 
tion and study, he simply " does not see them." 

We have here among all human beings, from the 
child being soothed to slumber after a busy day, to the 
millionaire seeking surcease of the intense preoccupa- 
tions of business life, a wide, varied, and growing demand 
for certain ministries which art in some of its endless 
forms best can give. We know as yet too little of the 
psychological results of specialized work, or of the endur- 
ing sedatives of life to criticize adversely these ministries, 



NEW VALUES 177 

even when offered by so modern and uncertain an art 
agency as the " movies." 

We find, in the second place, that in practice art is 
being increasingly called into service for publicity in the 
endless and protean forms which that form of diffusion of 
information which we call advertising assumes under the 
seeming necessities of modern life. Advertising of one 
kind or another besets us at every turn. It is the purpose 
of advertising to make appeal, sometimes to the under- 
standing, more often to the feelings, of those who are 
perhaps reluctant to heed. Frequently advertisers must 
win their way through obscuring understanding and 
through intensifying appeal to sentiment, taste, preju- 
dice, passion ; hence their methods may resemble those of 
wooers of old. 

Advertising is not confined to those only who have 
goods to sell. The propagandist of faiths and ideas is fast 
learning new methods of publicity, among them those that 
employ the aesthetic arts as means. In a fundamental 
sense man's desire to give publicity to his power, his 
achievements, his realized ambitions takes the form of 
large display of the embellishments of his person, and 
his possessions, as seen in the attention-commanding char- 
acter of the architecture of his house, the trappings of his 
entourage, decorative character of his women folk, and 
the munificence of his largesse. In large part doubtless, 
the lavish enlistment of art by the modern woman of 
wealth and leisure in the embellishment of her body and 
her personally controlled surroundings is due far more to 
her strivings to give publicity to her success than to the 
requirements of the mating instinct. 

To a peculiar degree the requirements of advertising 
are affected by competition. It is not apparent that the 
extension, elaboration, and artistic perfection of adver- 
12 



178 SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE FINE ARTS 

tising is to any substantial extent bound up with the com- 
petition that involves race or group or stock survival, as 
are, or were formerly, very certainly, work, war, worship, 
and mating; but, generally speaking, success in competi- 
tive business at any rate is most surely dependent, under 
modern conditions, on advertising. Hence the tremen- 
dous and still growing demands of advertising on all 
forms of art, and especially upon the graphic arts. It may 
be indeed that the expenditure of energy upon advertising 
will prove to be in large measure socially unproductive 
or even harmful, as is expenditure of energy on alcohol, 
opium, elaborate personal decoration, or gambling, but 
for the present we see this form of public appeal or pub- 
licity making of art a busily employed handmaiden. 

The third social function of aesthetic art which seems 
still vital persists in all those fields of activity where, the 
ends of utility having been served, man desires refine- 
ments of form, color, organization, communication, and 
service sucrTas reduce obtrusiveness, eliminate the non- 
essential or irrelevant, and tend to foster pleasant asso- 
ciations. In the world of material things this function of 
art is analogous to the sedative or solacing or recreative 
function of art in the world of things mental and spiritual. 
It is here that the useful arts come into handclasp with 
the so-called fine arts. 

The man of pragmatic inclinations wants a house that 
shall certainly provide desired space and arrangement 
accommodations; it must in addition thereto be suitably 
weather-proof, durable, and economical. Having pro- 
vided for these useful purposes he desires that sharp cor- 
ners be rounded, inharmonious projections tapered into 
graceful shapes, raw-construction work tastefully over- 
laid, and perhaps that a touch of decoration be added. 
People, not yet art-crazed, desire furniture that is restful, 



NEW VALUES 179 

safe, and durable; having these demands satisfied and 
within modest and restrained limits, they seek harmony 
of form and color as desirable adjuncts. To the practical 
man speech is essentially a useful means of intercommuni- 
cation; and always subordinate to the requirements of 
such use he desires that speech be musical, moderately 
decorated with figure and ceremonial form, and faintly 
touched by sentiment. The craftsman, if of right mold, 
buys his tools with discriminating study of their practical 
serviceability in his work; but being assured of these 
qualities he places also an approving valuation on their 
beauty of form, color, suggestiveness, and even faintly 
upon their decoration. To all real readers of books it is 
only the stored wisdom of the pages that makes primary 
appeal; this end being guaranteed, secondary considera- 
tions as to shape of volumes, decoration of covers, and 
artistry of printing receive attention. 

The multiplication of possessions as made possible 
by modern civilized life, rising standards of living, and 
man's increasing power to render materials and forces 
flexible to his will, all serve to give increasing vitality to 
what are here called the refining functions of art. But 
there is in this field a constant temptation to subordinate 
the lesser to the greater function. We seem easily to be 
able to educate ourselves, under the influence of competi- 
tion for possessions and especially for display of pos- 
sessions, to the point where not the serviceability of the 
article, but the aesthetic art conspicuously applied in it 
becomes the chief attraction. Children were once taught 
painfully to make " beautiful " handwriting in its shad- 
ings and flourishes — whether it was legible and rapid or 
not. At times the desire for beautiful work in book- 
making outweighs unduly the demand for the really 
significant contents of the volume. We are overwhelmed 



180 SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE FINE ARTS 

with prevailing demands for furniture, fabrics, tableware, 
and raiment that shall primarily satisfy aesthetic sensi- 
bilities and only incidentally strictly fundamental needs. 
The connoisseur, in things embodying applications of art, 
is often a seducer. He perverts useful functions to base 
ends. Nevertheless, it is in this domain that our schools 
of " industrial art " will find their largest and most useful 
function. They at least should avoid the temptation to 
yield to " short cuts," to make of pleasant gratification an 
end, to prefer, figuratively speaking, the painted woman of 
the streets to the virtuous matron of the home. 

5. THE PROBLEM 

Art is in the doldrums at present because those of us 
who are most art-sensitive cannot or will not see that the 
world has moved past the stage where art can easily render 
its mightier services — that is the hypothesis, unpopular 
though it be, which is here submitted for consideration. 
If men prove to be able increasingly to control their 
desired destinies through the means that we call science, 
why should the world again mass the desires and strivings 
that formerly in the ages of faith and feeling produced a 
Homer, a Phidias, an Angelo, a Wren, a Palestrina, a 
Shakespeare? We shall for ages continue to develop 
those individuals who have their interests in the historical 
aroused by Grecian sculpture, Gothic architecture, Renais- 
sance painting, German music, seventeenth-century 
drama, and eighteenth-century poetry ; and it will be a 
precious thing to have those gifted connoisseurs in our 
midst. Others will arise to preserve and develop curious 
interests in the psychology and architecture of Wagnerian 
opera, Russian ballet, futurist painting, and " problem " 
drama; and we cannot afford to suppress or discourage 
even these variants. Perhaps we shall yet discover through 



THE PROBLEM 181 

them, that some of these advanced "art forms" have, 
after all, some real social significance for modern times 
and conditions, and are not merely symptoms of art hys- 
teria, or " sports " produced through breeding and cul- 
tivating the art impulse in unnatural soil. 

For in some form there is always the possibility that 
art as one of the great engines of human progress, as an 
indispensable means of social evolution, may once again 
be in demand. We can conceive a world of human beings 
saturated with knowledge of " what " to do but in spite 
of clearly perceived self-interest weak in motives leading 
to action. We can conceive a situation where notwith- 
standing endless and perfect laws the will for justice 
might, be so weak as to require the appeal to sympathy and 
passion of a " Marsellaise," a " Song of the Shirt," a 
" Burghers of Calais." We can conceive a series of photo- 
plays leading out from the " Birth of a Nation," as the 
Gothic cathedrals grew out of little stone churches, to the 
point where the feelings of countless millions would be 
swayed into uncompromising hostility against the causes 
which produce war, which debase the virtue of woman- 
hood, or which promote the voluntary sterility of bio- 
logically good human stocks. 

Nevertheless, if the contentions of this chapter are 
sound, the outlook for " great art " for several genera- 
tions to come is dark. 

The world could not now put noble popular art to 
great uses if it had it ; and this fact must eternally under 
present conditions baffle the potential creators of the noble 
art which could appeal to and sway the multitudes; for 
it is a postulate of the theses of this paper, though be- 
latedly stated, that socially great art is usually democratic 
or " popular " art. The favors of wealthy and self- 
glorifying patrons, over-persuaded trustees, and the few 



182 SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE FINE ARTS 

sincere devotees of res tempora acta cannot evoke the 
cumulative approvals and strivings that finally give the 
world enduring examples of socially influential art. 

That art must usually be simply the culmination of in- 
numerable efforts of emulative creators, each enheartened 
by a crowd of applauding followers, and each perhaps 
conscious of meeting only the demand of the moment. 
That which subsequent generations have appraised as 
among the greatest of the art products of an art-prizing 
era was often at the time born in obscurity, the bearer 
of it as unconscious of the future repute of his creation 
as was the mother of Lincoln unaware of the fame that 
would come to her son. It was simply one of the un- 
numbered contributions to a public demand as massive and 
persistent as is to-day the demand for lifelike photography. 

Art is in the doldrums to-day because those who 
must express themselves through aesthetic media are dis- 
contented at being restricted to lesser and subordinated 
missions. The artists and the most appreciative followers 
of art appear to think that we can and ought to restore 
the past. They cannot and will not believe that the cur- 
rent of life has carried the world into new regions where 
men must use and learn to pride themselves in the use of 
new instrumentalities. The possible ministries of art 
dwindle in those fields of human activity where great 
movements are astir and deeds of great consequence are 
being done. But in the groves where men recreate their 
energies and take the passing satisfactions of life, it still 
in minor forms makes its appeals and has its values. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION IN GRAPHIC 
AND PLASTIC ARTS 

I. INTRODUCTORY 

Literature, music and dancing are " fine arts " that 
seem to minister most largely to what we can distinguish 
as the cultural phases of life. Many of us believe that 
they possess potential values also for the moral, civic, and 
religious life, but the spirit of our time seems opposed to 
efforts to distinguish these values and to promote their 
realization by appropriate media chosen from these fields. 

The case of the arts of form and color is very different. 
The " fine arts " phases of these blend endlessly with 
utilitarian applications in manufacture and in home- 
making. But, as regards adequate interpretations of 
social values, the situation here also is very confused. 
More than half a century before the outbreak of the 
great war, the leading industrial nations, keenly bent on 
economic rivalries, found that " applied art " was likely 
to become a large factor in their own or their rivals* suc- 
cesses. France had an historic lead. Great Britain under- 
took large policies of social encouragement. Germany 
and the United States were not to be outdone. But in 
spite of endless discussion, and much experimentation, the 
situation as regards demonstrably valid programs has re- 
mained very confused down to the present. 

There are those who hope for new vision and new 
support when the chaotic conditions consequent upon the 
war shall have been adjusted. We must hope for the 
best ; but we must not cease to help nature and society. 

183 



184 THE OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION 

We fervently hope that politics and international re- 
lationships will change for the better. We trust that the 
small nations will find more security and that democracy 
will find itself purged as consequences of the great 
struggle. And we look wistfully for more light on cur- 
rent economic problems, the difficulties of which the war 
has aggravated. 

It is clear that the war greatly extended knowledge 
and applications of certain forms of science — chemistry 
and psychology most of all. There were moments when 
we thought its necessities were tending to establish certain 
bigger and better forms of cooperation than we had known 
before ; but probably in this respect the sow of custom is 
already returning to her wallow. 

In literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, 
art-dancing, will it be found that war has lifted or lowered 
us? Probably it is too soon to tell. At this moment the 
signs are dubious and capable of almost any interpretation. 

For education the war has unquestionably done much. 
It has not materially clarified our specific aims, I think, and 
in only a few respects has it brought better methods into 
relief. But it has swept away the last surviving prejudices 
in favor of illiteracy. It has battered down the bulwarks 
of British obstinacy against science in the schools. It has 
made clear to all leaders of men the pressing need, under 
modern social and economic conditions, of enforced con- 
tinuation, or part-time, schooling even up to seventeen or 
eighteen years of age. Every one is now convinced that 
our Russias, Mexicos, Chinas and Turkeys can be made 
tolerable members of the modern world only through uni- 
versal education. Every well-informed person realizes 
that Bolshevism, anarchism, syndicalism, and all the other 
isms of those self-inflamed piratical crews who, because 



INTRODUCTORY 185 

things are not perfect on board, would scuttle the ship 
before they themselves have learned to build or manage 
rafts, are to be prevented in future only through more 
extended and especially more purposeful education in 
the schools. 

The war has not so much given us new light on educa- 
tion as it has accelerated the operation of certain forces — 
some making for the destruction of long outgrown and 
functionless organs, some making for the construction of 
new mechanisms and the evoking of new spirits suited to 
the modern age — which had begun to operate some years 
before the war began. We cannot afford to forget that 
education is still largely in the prescientific stages of 
evolution. Medicine, agriculture, aviation, mining, elec- 
trical engineering, and navigation can, even in funda- 
mental respects be transformed overnight by new dis- 
coveries. In these fields progress is now being made 
largely on the social plane of scientific purpose and 
method. To achieve such progress requires no painful 
breaking down of age-old customs, repeated blasting at 
cemented dogmas, or surgical cuttings into the warm flesh 
of cherished faiths. 

But education, like politics, religion, and the domestic 
institutions, still rests largely on the prescientific founda- 
tions of faith, belief, custom, sentiment, and tradition. 
The underlying sciences — especially psychology and soci- 
ology — are not yet sufficiently developed to give us the 
keys to the complexes of aspiration, ideal, social habit, 
and half-knowledge which we have painfully built up for 
thousands of years. 

Progress comes, of course, in education as it comes 
sooner or later in all other fields of human activity on a 
prescientific basis ; but it comes haltingly and uncertainly. 



186 THE OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION 

It comes as a result only of endless discussion, of long- 
drawn battles between different kinds of faiths, wherein 
important issues are often submerged and ruined as were 
the fields and villages of the battlefields of France. 

But the one big message which should come to educa- 
tion no less than to government, religion, economic pro- 
duction, community building, and the family in this time 
of transition from faith and custom foundations to foun- 
dations to be erected on the rock of science is that of 
social purposiveness. Man may never be able to answer 
the ultimate riddles of existence, whither? and to what 
purpose ? but it will henceforth be a poor civilization which 
cannot provide reasonable answers to these riddles when 
restricted to affairs of this world. What are the types of 
society we seek to produce? What are the varieties and 
degrees O'f efficiency — in personal culture, in social right- 
eousness, r in physical well-being, in vocational competency 
— which we determine, in the light of best available knowl- 
edge, to be desirable and, no less important, practicable? 

Hence we may expect on the part of educators in- 
creasing demands upon sociology that it exhibit in specific 
form the desirable and attainable objectives of all educa- 
tion, or of any variety of education, for society as it exists 
to-day or can be made to exist to-morrow or next century. 
With respect to any traditionally established subject of 
study educational sociology now asks : For what purpose 
is it prescribed or offered? For what group of learners? 
What are the results of its teaching? Does it usurp the 
time of better subjects? What modifications should be 
made in order that it may prove more genuinely func- 
tional ? With respect to social needs not yet met by organ- 
ized schooling, educational sociology asks : What are these 
needs, as developed by any particular social group? Why 



INTRODUCTORY 187 

do non-school agencies of education fail to meet them? 
What particular types of school education will probably 
meet them? 

Because nomenclature of art education (like that of 
several other forms of education) is vague and equivocal, 
confusion can only be avoided by indicating senses in 
which words are herein used. " The Arts " include in the 
present chapter only those products embodying skill and 
taste conspicuously according to aesthetic principles of 
form, color, and shade. The useful arts, the practical 
arts, the liberal arts, and the fine arts of music, literature, 
and the like are excluded. 

Hence such derived terms as " artistic/' " art factors 
in products," " art-based - vocations," "art-using indus- 
tries," " artistic wares," " artistic designer," and the like 
are here intended to indicate, and also to be limited to, con- 
ditions where production or appreciation of the aesthetic 
in form, color and shade are consciously prominent, if 
not dominant. 

The writer cannot speak on any phase of art educa- 
tion from the inside; his approach is essentially that of 
the educational sociologist who studies society and its 
processes as objectively as practicable, and therefrom 
seeks to derive tests of desirable educational aims, as well 
as to evaluate contemporary achievements. 

It shall be the purpose of this chapter, therefore, to 
discuss certain problems of art education as they appear 
when viewed from the standpoint of educational soci- 
ology, and in the light of conditions created or modified 
by the war. To an increasing extent all educators must 
look to sociology for light as to society's needs of various 
types of education; and we must obviously turn to ob- 
jective studies of society as it now exists to determine how 
far any given type of education is actually functioning. 



188 THE OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION 

2. PROBLEMS AHEAD 

The desirable purposes and place of education in the 
graphic and plastic arts have been much discussed in all 
western countries during the last sixty years, but the dis- 
cussion seems to have been rendered confused, and largely 
fruitless by the failure to dissociate vocational from non- 
vocational ends. Just now there appear good prospects 
of clearing up some of this confusion in America. The 
war seems to have taught some of us the difference be- 
tween make-believe vocational education and the real 
article. In a few quarters at least it is being recognized 
that any serious school vocational education for a speci- 
fied calling had better not be undertaken at all rather than 
be undertaken in a trifling spirit without genuine voca- 
tional motive or clear-cut vision of the goals of productive 
efficiency. Hence the growing conviction that schools 
planned to train competent workers for any one of the 
more than two thousand different vocations which Amer- 
ican men and women follow, must learn to take their 
work very seriously and to have clearly defined objectives 
which shall not be set in a No Man's Land half-way to 
some hazy and illusive goal of vocational competency. 
They must carefully select their students and sternly 
frown upon the complacent amateurishness and fussy, 
admiration-craving dilettantism which are still the curse 
of nearly all vocational schools in America except those 
preparing for the well-defined professions. 

Vocational education, therefore, whether for the 
artistic professions of painting, sculpture and architecture 
or for those less exalted specialties in which mastery of 
the methods and materials of the plastic and graphic arts 
is a primary essential, is, we now perceive, for the few 
only, and those of select talent. But non-vocational edu- 



PROBLEMS AHEAD 189 

cation — the general or liberal education that elevates 
tastes, refines sensibilities and makes of man a superior 
rather than an inferior utilizer — is clearly for the multi- 
tude; and this should prove no less true as respects the 
graphic and plastic arts than as respects all other products 
of nature and of human ingenuity. 

But specific problems as to the desirable scope and 
content of art education in all its forms are certainly 
going to vex us sorely for the next few years. This is 
largely because sociology can give us so little light on the 
place of the various aesthetic arts in modern life. It would 
seem that modern studies in sociology have done much to 
discover explanations, to clear up the mysteries, and even 
to find solutions for present-day purposes, of man's 
economic, domestic, militaristic, political, and even reli- 
gious activities; but students have not yet appeared who 
can interpret and assign adequate social valuations to his 
aesthetic aspirations and expressions, whether in the do- 
mains of seeing, hearing, or mental imagery. We still 
leave to the partisans and special pleaders almost all 
attempts at analysis of values accruing, or desired to 
accrue, to modern society from old or new art, from 
higher appreciations of painting, sculpture, architecture, 
music, poetry and dancing. Naturally and inevitably these 
discussions are replete with mysticism, unexplained dog- 
mas and the bias of individual predilections. 

In the meantime, the democratic millions of America, 
following their instinctive preferences and under signifi- 
cant pressures of nationalistic or religious ideal, give to 
the photo-drama, the short story, mechanical music and 
printed illustration the same massive approval that in 
other ages the millions gave to Athenian architecture, 
sculpture and tragedy, to Roman temples, to 1 thirteenth- 
century French decoration and to German music. These 



ipo THE OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION 

popular demands exhibit some of the large facts of social 
psychology about which little is known as yet. In any 
given age it would seem that those contemporary art 
workers who have established strong intellectual connec- 
tions with the historic expressions of their art are pretty 
contemptuous of the then prevailing popular interests. 
But the very magnitude of the popular demand and the 
tremendous rewards, in money and distinction, which it 
can bestow, leads to most exacting competitions in which 
finally creators of greatest ability are enlisted. These 
supreme men are then enabled to produce the enduring 
works which give historic fame to the period, but which 
not infrequently mark also the close of that kind of artistic 
era. Henceforth, the abiding products of this time are 
relegated to sophisticated taste and to historical research. 
Ages later efforts will be made to restore the appreciative 
attitude^ of the multitude, but these stubbornly persist in 
their low-brow quest of novel, pleasure-giving socially 
forceful art. 

Many are the general problems which appear to vex 
educators who seek to determine what should be the place 
of graphic and plastic arts in the education of to-day. We 
Americans are now the wealthiest people of history. We 
are freely spending vast sums on dwellings, buildings for 
business and amusement, roads, parks, cars, bridges, fur- 
niture, clothes, table ware, jewelry, moving pictures, 
magazine and advertising illustration, photographs, books, 
and bric-a-brac. If we desired we could spend lavishly 
for paintings, statues, and sculptured stone decorations. 
Following the economic trend of a power-using age, we are 
diminishing steadily the relative amount of handwork 
and increasing the amount of machine work in the making 
and refining of these products. Our wondrous and costly 
machines become more competent in multiplying " stand- 



AMERICA'S PLACE 191 

ardized parts " — whether sea-scapes, statues, spoons, rugs, 
or parlor tables. Sometimes it would seem that the only 
fields reserved to the craftsman of historic type are cater- 
ing to the few wealthy who seek display, or to aesthetic 
longings for a few wholly decorative bits of bric-a-brac 
in the shape of mantel or bureau ornaments. 1 

3. America's place 

In one respect, indeed, the war has clearly extended 
America's art heritage. We used to boast that we were 
to teach the world democracy. Then we found ourselves 
exceeding the other nations in wealth. But, until very 
recently, there were always nations to which we looked 
up in art, science, literature, music, and artistic wares. 
To these nations went our students, visitors and buyers. 
What of the future? Do we expect still to send our youth 
to Paris to complete their education in architecture and 
painting, to Germany to learn the latest in chemistry, 

1 It seems unfortunate that the words " applied arts " and 
" applied art " have fallen into disrepute lately. It is difficult to 
draw necessary distinctions without their equivalents. Harmonies 
of form, color and shade are more or less sought and valued by 
man in endless objects of artifice and nature; but the relative 
importance of aesthetic elements as contrasted with elements of 
healthfulness, durability, low cost and general serviceability vary 
enormously between the Parthenon and a log cabin, a ball-room 
gown and a workman's overalls, the Sistine Madonna and a maga- 
zine illustration, a Louis XIV cabinet and a tool chest, an oriental 
rug and a linoleum kitchen floor covering. 

One finds occasionally in a paper on " art " the fatuous state- 
ment that the man interested in what we are here calling " the 
arts " is concerned with " relative values/' Ideally, perhaps he 
should be; and, under conditions of education very different from 
those now prevailing, perhaps he could be; but for the present it 
is ridiculous that these pretensions should be made on his behalf. 
He is expected to be an expert in (esthetic values; but it is not 
practicable for him to be an expert in the numerous other ele- 
ments which give clothing, tools, houses, furniture, vehicles and 
landscapes their total values. 

Harmonies of form and color contribute to the worth of 
shoes, automobiles, gowns, and railway cars; but there are so 



i 9 2 THE OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION 

music, and medicine? Probably not. The wealth, power 
and prominence of America is more likely to draw hither 
the ablest teachers from countries that have heretofore 
been the Meccas of zealous learners. 

Hereafter, then, we shall probably not only set our 
own problems but attempt to solve them as well. We 
shall recover from a disposition, often degenerating into 
silliness, to approve the foreign just because it is foreign. 
( No power on earth can, of course, stay the feverish foot- 
steps of our fad followers.) Surely as a people we are 
destined to give greater recognition and other incentives 
to our leaders and creators. Can we, as part of the process 
of finding ourselves, and as preliminary to consideration 
of detailed problems, always puzzling, of art training and 
instruction, arrive at some reasonable general understand- 
ing of certain large problems of the place and significance 
of arHn modern life? What are likely to be the relative 

many other and more important elements of value in these articles 
as to which the " artist " can know little or nothing that clearly 
he can achieve results only by somehow correlating his efforts 
with those of other experts in specific values. 

We needlessly allow ourselves to perpetuate much confusion 
here by our careless use of such words as designer, architect, 
house decorator and the like. In the broad sense, justified by 
long usage, each of these blanket terms covers many types of 
workers, some of whom require to be trained in aesthetic valua- 
tions and some do not. A locomotive or a raincoat requires a designer 
or designers as much as a parlor table or a lady's summer hat; but 
upon the first type of product few demands for aesthetic qualities 
are laid, while many such demands are made on the second. 
We need some such qualifying terms as artistic designer, hygienic 
designer, structural designer, service designer, etc. Quite proba- 
bly in designing a bridge across North River several kinds of 
designers should be forced to work in cooperation. Certainly the 
expert in structural design (the engineer), or the expert designer 
for effectiveness of traffic, or the expert in aesthetic values, if 
given the job alone may be expected to make a sorry mess of it. 
No one man under present-day conditions can be an expert in 
each of the half-dozen categories of values that enter into the 
making of cotton dressgoods, parks, school houses, children's 
rompers, railway passenger coaches, or brick buildings. 



AMERICA'S PLACE i 93 

potencies in producing " social results " in the future, of 
art (through its " aesthetic " appeals) and of science 
(through its " knowledge " appeals)? What is the sig- 
nificance, sociologically, of " popular " or " democratic " 
art? What are to be the effects, in terms of genuine 
social values, of increased use of power-driven machinery 
in the production of all sorts of artistic staples? 

Now I submit that sociologist and artist have nowhere 
come together on these problems and until they do the 
present confusion of tongues and counsels will prevail. 
In fact, among artists themselves the pragmatists and 
the idealists are arrayed in almost perpetual conflicts ("art 
for man's sake " vs. " art for art's sake "). 

The age-long battle between Epicurean and Stoic is 
still being fought every day, not only among producers, 
but, perhaps more significant, among users of music, lit- 
erature, dancing, and the plastic arts. Are we to provide 
art chiefly to give pleasure? Are we to try, laboriously, 
to educate the young to higher standards of appreciation, 
primarily that they may get keener, more massive, or more 
enduring pleasures therefrom? Is pleasure (or happi- 
ness) to be regarded as a summum bonun of life, or as a 
valuable stimulating means to be put aside as soon as it 
has helped us achieve more important and worthy ends? 
Historically there can be no question that all the fine arts 
have played great roles in helping mankind, or some 
ascending portion thereof, up the rocky heights of prog- 
ress. What of the future? In no critical spirit, but with 
strong desire to have some of the involved questions care- 
fully studied, the foregoing chapter has analyzed a num- 
ber of the specific aspects under which this general prob- 
lem may be considered. 

How shall we interpret " popular art " ? Teachers 
aiming to improve taste in music, literature, drama, paint- 
13 



i 9 4 THE OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION 

ing and sculpture often seem to fail to realize that the 
popular appetite for these things is omnipresent and insis- 
tent, teachers or no teachers. The schools have needed 
to do nothing to popularize the short story, the modern 
novel, the cheap play, the photo-drama, mechanical music, 
or magazine illustration. One wonders to what extent the 
efforts of " superior " teachers to deprecate and frown 
upon the vulgar tastes which run after these things, may 
not, after all, be like the well-meant efforts of Mrs. Par- 
tington to sweep back the rising tides ? Perhaps the tides 
are going to rise just so high in spite of all our efforts, 
and perhaps no less certainly, also they are destined to 
come to rest before swamping our homes and our lives. 

We need the help of the social sociologist in this mat- 
ter of popular art. Community appreciation of folk-song 
and folk-dancing was once, apparently, as diffused, spon- 
taneous and intense as is now appreciation of the photo- 
drama ; can those vanished popular interests be restored ? 
It may be, as suggested above, that every period, renowned 
for its great producers in special fields of art, was simply 
the zenith period of a much longer period of pervasive 
and truly " popular " interest in that art. If so, is it well 
that art teachers of to-day should so constantly bend their 
looks backward ? At least from the standpoint of twen- 
tieth-century America there is something that at times 
seems disgustingly futile, and at others very pathetic, in 
our endless attempts to bring back vanished voices, to 
infuse vitality into the mummified remains of past cul- 
tures. Doubtless giants lived in those days ; and perhaps 
the faiths of the new generations must still be built on 
foundations of ancestor worship, that the continuity of 
tradition be not lost or the richness of the social inheri- 
tance be not undervalued. But in the dynamic age, and 
especially when new continents are to be explored and set- 



ECONOMIC APPLICATIONS 195 

tied there is such a thing as trying to preserve in daily 
use endless heirlooms that had better be recently stored in 
attic or museum, that they may not cumber the feet of 
rising generations. The least we can do is to release our 
thinkers to the extent that will enable them to study and 
evaluate the spontaneous arts that spring unbidden from 
the fertile soil of popular aspirations. 

4. ECONOMIC APPLICATIONS 

If the " artist " has not found solid ground for his feet 
in appraising either the place of art in modern life or the 
significance of popular demands, it is also no less true 
that he still refuses to face the facts of contemporary 
economic production. It may be one of the symptoms of 
the waning powers of art (of historic types) that the 
artist still so often clings, in ideal and thought, to pro- 
duction wherein tools mediate only to the least possible 
extent in the processes whereby the hand of man shapes 
raw materials into goods to satisfy human needs. Few 
present-day writers upon art have anything but words of 
detestation or dismay for production through power- 
driven machinery. They refuse to think of the possible 
social values of multiplying populations, rising standards 
of living, and the freeing of men from drudgery through 
use of the harnessed inanimate forces of nature. " Auto- 
matic processes," " standardized parts," " quantity pro- 
duction " — the formulae of those producers whose aims 
are to minister to the growing needs of humanity while at 
the same time diminishing the labor cost of wares — are 
words anathema to the artist. He is far from home in this 
modern world, but it is certain that if he cannot accommo- 
date himself to our life he shall find occupation and live- 
lihood only by playing along the side alleys of civilization 
and coming to entertain us in the evening hours when, the 



i 9 6 THE OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION 

burdens of the day laid aside, we seek recreation 
or diversion. 

These, then, are among the fundamental problems of 
the relation of art to modern life to which we must find 
solutions before our proposals for art education in the 
schools can be grounded on the rock. In the meantime, of 
course, we shall, as we ought, go on studying our educa- 
tional problems by methods necessarily empirical, and 
perhaps very personally empirical at that. 

In one respect, indeed, as suggested above, it would 
seem that we have recently made substantial advances 
towards sounder conceptions of art education. We have 
learned to think and speak of " capacities for apprecia- 
tion " as something very different from " powers of exe- 
cution," and to recognize that these capacities can be 
systematically developed and trained towards predeter- 
mined ends. To a man interpreting educational aims in 
terms of sociological conditions and requirements this 
seems immeasurably important. 

For it is clear to the student of social life that modern 
conditions tend steadily to specialize, particularize, and 
localize production, whereas they no less certainly tend to 
universalize and democratize consumption or utilization. 

A half dozen engineers and (we hope) artists in De- 
troit may design a " T model " automobile of which mil- 
lions will be sold in all parts of the world. A clever poster 
advertising cigarettes will be circulated to the extent of 
ten million copies in all countries. A choice design of 
Colonial spoon will be manufactured in countless numbers 
over scores of years. A genius working in Paris origin- 
ates a novel and attractive design suited to calicoes ; within 
three years, a trifle " sophisticated " perhaps, that design 
will be found on scores of millions of yards of cloth sold 
in every market in the world. 



ECONOMIC APPLICATIONS 197 

All our people are now being incessantly educated in 
standards of utilization — aesthetic, no less than hygienic, 
economic and utilitarian. But with this education the 
schools have at present little to do. It is carried on in an 
unorganized fashion wherever two women meet to criti- 
cize the clothes of a third, wherever a salesman tries to 
" sell " a buyer, wherever a board of directors is being 
urged to a larger campaign of advertising, and wherever 
men are rivaling each other in "conspicuous consumption." 

Companions and salesmen are, of course, educating 
the average young man to-day as to choice of neckties and 
socks a hundredfold more than does any school. The 
same is true in the case of girls' hats, the housewife's par- 
lor furniture, the business man's automobiles, the news- 
paperman's typography, and the farmer's hedgerows. 
Much of this education is bad rather than good; it is 
excessively governed by the dictates of that mystic force 
called fashion; and the conscious exploitations of com- 
merce play no small part in its operations. 

Here, then, we are beginning to recognize, lie large 
opportunities for the schools. They can, with unselfish 
purpose, educate " tastes " or " appreciation." They 
can lead our youth to prefer those things which, among 
their other values, include suitable or good harmonies of 
form, color, and shade. By making our people seek, de- 
mand, and patronize the better rather than the worse, they 
can concentrate the effects of their desires on producers 
and soon compel these to discover the means — including 
more competent service in aesthetic designing — of meeting 
public demand. 

Now, I suspect from some things I hear and read that 
our art teachers, not to be outdone by teachers in other 
fields, are determined to try all possible wrong methods of 
achieving the objectives of appreciation before they settle 



198 THE OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION 

on the right method. All forms of school education in 
practice, unlike those outside the school, seem bent on 
accepting at first as their primary principles of method 
such products of topsy-turveydom as : " from the abstract 
to the concrete," " from the general to the particular," 
" from the unknown to the known," " from the remote to 
the near," " from the complex to the simple," " from the 
incomprehensible to the comprehensible." 

5. ART APPRECIATION 

It is reported that some of the artists are trying to 
teach appreciation of plastic art by seeking to give the 
child early understanding of certain " principles " of 
harmony of color, shade, and form, such as rhythm, bal- 
ance, and the rest. Are they trying to lay the foundations 
for rigjit appreciation of tableware, furniture, hats, cot- 
tages and book-bindings via the media of paper, pencil 
and brush? Judging by pedagogic experience in other 
fields, I doubt if in that way much will be accomplished. 
A few gifted children may get the real gleam. These 
would have been pretty sure to get it anyway. And a few 
others will become little aesthetic prigs; but I suspect the 
large majority will remain unaffected. 

So far as the rank and file of us consumers are con- 
cerned, it is pedagogically probable that there is only one 
way of educating us economically and effectively to be 
good " choosers " or " users " of wall-paper and that is 
to bring us enough times into situations where we see, 
contrast, and analyze various kinds of wall-paper— hide- 
ous, bad, fair, good, admirable — in actual use. Let the 
experience of the wise ones impinge on the inexperienced 
or spoiled taste of learners a few times in these situations, 
and I predict that far better results will follow than from 



ART APPRECIATION 199 

all the brush and pencil work we can crowd into eight 
years in school. 

If we want to develop good taste in tableware among 
fourteen-year-olds, let us provide moving exhibits — of the 
good and bad, the enduring and the ephemeral, side by 
side; let us get pupils to observe, to question their first 
impulsive preferences, to reconsider hasty first judgments, 
to hear the criticisms of authority; let us on occasions 
somewhat removed from each other give pupils exercise 
in arranging a hundred spoons in order of excellence 
according to aesthetic standards previously discussed and 
illustrated. It seems certain that these procedures will 
beget right appreciations speedily and surely. 

Desirable, but impracticable, some may retort. We 
cannot tell until we shall have made and tried plans. Cer- 
tain it is that our children are surrounded, even beset, in 
their daily lives with clothes, furniture, shoes, tableware, 
automobiles, houses, wall-papers, book-bindings, jewelry. 
Are all these materials inaccessible, unusable? The chief 
difficulties are pedagogical rather than administrative, 
very probably. 

Turning from the side of appreciation to that of 
execution it is not apparent that the situation has notice- 
ably improved in recent years. There are, of course, two 
distinct divisions in this field of execution — first that 
involving the teaching of drawing or other graphic or 
plastic art as an auxiliary tool of expression or use; and, 
second, that involving the training of specialists, such as 
painters, sculptors, artistic designers, artistic craftsmen, 
artistic decorators, etc. 

We hear less now than we did a few years ago about 
the desirability of teaching all or many people to draw, to 
use color, and the like for the reason that these are needed 
in so many walks of life. Most of the old arguments for 



2oo THE OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION 

the universal teaching of drawing (as a means of ex- 
pression or for use in vocation) were based on a. very 
superficial and uncriticized knowledge of modern produc- 
tion. The large mass of it was, indeed, assumption based 
on no sociological knowledge whatever. 

We know now that in few vocations is there consid- 
erable need of ability to draw ; and that when it is required 
it can best be given in special vocational schools for these 
vocations. The large majority of vocations make no' per- 
ceptible demand for draftsmanship, or even for ability to 
read drawings. 

Furthermore, it would appear that drawing as a means 
of expression is akin to a foreign language; if it is to be 
used at all effectively (among adults) it must be very 
well learned — in fact, so well learned that only by a long 
and painful outlay of time and energy, as in the case of 
a foreign language, can results be obtained that are at all 
worth while. 

6. CONCLUSIONS 

i. If public education in and for "the arts" is to 
achieve its best results for American society during the 
next half century, then it is of the utmost importance 
that we should seek fuller knowledge and agreement than 
we yet possess of the relationship of the various mani- 
festations of art to modern life as it is or should become 
under conscious effort. 

2. Of no less importance to educational planning is 
the development of an accurate nomenclature of art edu- 
cation. A loose, indeterminate, equivocal nomenclature in 
any field of modern enterprise is to be regarded as indica- 
tive of primitive development or else of incoherence of 
underlying theory. In either case improvement is 
called for. 



CONCLUSIONS 20 1 

3. In all the grades up to the time pupils are sixteen 
years of age our schools should offer for election (to the 
extent that facilities permit) short unit courses on the 
basis of amateur execution — the high-grade play basis — 
in the graphic and plastic arts, pure and applied. Such 
units can be developed in free-hand drawing, decorative 
textile making, instrumental drawing, simple pottery, 
modeling, ornamental metal work, wood carving, stencil- 
ing, leather work, text illustration, picture copying, pho- 
tography, decorative dressing, readings in art history, etc. 
These courses should be organized by persons who are not 
educational systematists or drill masters, but who believe 
in giving free scope, in this department of education, to the 
amateur creative, initiative, or constructive instincts of 
children. Important contributions, either to the voca- 
tional powers or to the capacities for appreciation required 
among adults in civilized life, need hardly be expected 
from these courses. Vocational and appreciational by- 
products there will be at times ; but these should constitute 
incidental and secondary, rather than primary, objectives. 

4. Beginning somewhere in the upper grades — per- 
haps when children are about twelve years of age — elec- 
tive short unit courses in appreciation of art factors in 
objects of daily use or association should be offered. 
Such unit courses — for, perhaps ten to thirty hours in 
length — might well be offered on such subjects as : study 
of pictures ; good taste in women's and girls' clothing; art 
factors in neighborhood architecture ; garden art ; art fac- 
tors in home furnishings; art in tableware and table 
service ; art elements in book-bindings and typography. 

These courses should center in the cooperative study 
of objective realities made available either by fixed ex- 
hibits to be visited, or traveling exhibits to be circulated 
among schools. Certain units in the same field — e.g.. 



202 THE OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION 

dress, housefurnishings, architecture — might be offered 
at successive intervals to the same pupils as they mature — 
for example, first at twelve, again at fifteen, and again 
at eighteen — on more advanced levels. Comprehension 
of abstract principles of aesthetics should be sought only 
as a secondary product of these courses. 

It is doubtful if we should expect much in the way of 
development of genuine capacities for art appreciation 
except as we bring the learner into intimate contact with 
the objects embodying art forms of the right kind. In 
other words, we should view doubtfully attempts to teach 
appreciations of architecture, tableware, or dresses 
through the media of pencil, brush, paper, or even 
modeling material. 

We should not approve that practice often still found 
in supposedly vocational schools, of trying to teach pupils 
of average general powers or of average artistic powers, 
the principles (always remote and abstract) of art* as a 
related subject. We should insist that very early exer- 
cises, problems and projects be developed whereon the 
learner can study and practice applications of art in the 
particular forms required in the vocation for which he is 
being trained. From the concrete to the abstract, not the 
reverse ; from the particular to the general, not the reverse ; 
from the known to the unknown, not the reverse; these 
must be pedagogical guiding principles. 

Amateur craftsmanship in occupations presenting 
much or little in the way of artistic possibilities: — ranging 
from wireless, potato growing, and bread making, to 
printing, photography and jewelry making — should be 
encouraged in our schools, but not for vocational reasons 
and in many cases probably not primarily for ends 
of appreciation. 

5. We should cease to defend the teaching of either 



CONCLUSIONS 203 

general free-hand or general instrumental drawing design 
as a vocational subject. The probable vocational func- 
tioning of these subjects as now taught or as they can be 
taught in schools of general education is very doubtful. 
Hence the teaching of any form of drawing or design for 
vocational purposes should be confined to the vocational 
school devoted to education for a clearly recognized \o- 
cation, the demands of which for any particular art 
powers are known and evaluated. 

For children of manifest talent and so situated as 
likely to become aspirants for vocational training towards 
the art-based vocations there should be available, from 
the age of twelve on, invitation courses in drawing, paint- 
ing, modeling, and handicraft, as prevocational to fields 
of vocational study later to be undertaken in special voca- 
tional schools for the art-based vocations. Not numbers, 
but talent, selected as are candidates for art school scholar- 
ships abroad, should be sought for these courses. 

6. A substantial number of vocations use drawing 
or other forms of art in a minor capacity or related 
technical function. Examples are carpentry, dressmaking, 
printing, elementary-school teaching (it can be assumed 
that the teaching of specialized related art must usually be 
offered by special or departmental teachers) , certain forms 
of salesmanship, and tinsmithing. But owing to the spe- 
cialized character of the art utilized in each of these and 
the fact that 90 per cent, of all workers use or can use 
no drawing or other art in their vocations, it is obvious 
that the teaching of specialized related art must usually be 
confined to the vocational schools where major skills and 
technical knowledge are acquired. 

7. Vocational schools, professional or lower, main- 
tained to train workers for the art-based vocations^- 
that is, callings such as those of textile designer, adver- 



204 THE OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION 

tising illustrator, teacher of art appreciation, interior dec- 
orator, decorative sculptor, etc., in which knowledge and 
ability to apply in special ways and in accordance with 
exacting standards principles of graphic and plastic arts 
constitute major requirements— must so develop and ex- 
tend their work that they shall become complete vocational 
schools instead of the truncated kind now commonly 
found. That is, they must learn the requirements of the 
vocations for which they train; they must cease to turn 
students out half -equipped for these vocations, trusting 
them to round out their training under the hit-and-miss 
conditions of apprenticeship ; and they must connect with 
commercial establishments so that the last one or two years 
of the student's course shall be spent on some part-time 
basis of participation in practical productive work under 
the supervision of the school as shall insure real testing 
and, ultimately, genuine competency. At present too many 
of our public schools of art or design or craftsmanship 
turn out a multitude of quarter-finished or half -finished 
aspirants for employment in art-using industries. Too 
many of these, especially of the fair sex, have never had 
any real vocational motives at all. They are headed into 
waters of commercial competition, ignorant of their own 
limitations, to sink, swim or marry, but of their ultimate 
fate the art school knows little, and except for the few 
shining stars, seems to care less. 

We must refuse to allow our so-called art schools — 
private as well as public — longer to deceive the public by 
teaching . only parts, and sometimes doubtful parts, of 
supposed art-based vocations. We should insist on such 
surveys of these vocations as will clearly show what 
may, in any given case, be expected of apprenticeship, 
of unsupervised " learning on the job " ; and what we find 
that apprenticeship or the work itself cannot contribute 



CONCLUSIONS 205 

effectively and economically, to vocational competency, 
we must insist the schools shall contribute even if they 
have to double the length of their courses, reduce the 
numbers of their students and replace some of their pres- 
ent faculty members by men and women proficient, in a 
productive sense, in the applied fields. 

8. In so far as artists and educators advise the public 
as to desirable future developments, let us not take the 
unethical position that we always ought to meet and crush 
foreign competition in our own markets, nor yet take the 
silly position that it is always profitable to do so. There 
are too many people now urging us incessantly to lift our- 
selves by our economic bootstraps, to eat our own cake 
and keep it, too. In the long run the country that does 
not import cannot export. In the long run crowded 
peoples working with limited resources are going to do 
finer, more artistic and more scientific work in several 
respects than less crowded peoples, less harried by eco- 
nomic limitation. Our literature of educational propa- 
ganda is now too full of proposals that we, like Mrs. 
Partington, sweep back the economic tides with our little 
academic brooms. 

9. For many purposes we greatly need surveys of the 
wares which men to-day produce and consume, such sur- 
veys to involve some kind of comparative weighting of the 
various factors which give them value in satisfying human 
wants. For example, if we analyze the factors which give 
us a resultant " general suitability " in clothing we shall 
find them to include factors of hygiene, durability, adapta- 
tion to working needs, and " looks." In practice we expect 
the " looks " or aesthetic factor to bulk large in a girl's 
ballroom dress, and small in a house-working dress. So 
in all other products. We expect to pay a substantial 
quota for the aesthetic factors in sleeping-cars, parlor 



2o6 THE OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION 

furniture, family silverware, permanent residences, hotels, 
parks, cherished books, and sporting rifles. But we ex- 
pect little of the aesthetic in freight-cars, kitchen chairs, 
army eating utensils, temporary houses, barns, hayfields, 
newspapers, or army rifles. In expressing demands for 
more " artistic " production what attention should we give 
to aesthetic factors in, respectively: children's shoes and 
women's outing hats; pleasure automobiles and auto 
trucks; men's shoes and men's pipes; the typography of a 
morning newspaper and that of a set of Shakespere; a 
summer cottage and a village warehouse; a watch and 
a bracelet; a parlor lamp and a kitchen gas stove? From 
this analysis we need to proceed to a classification of the 
industries according to the degrees of which they could 
or should use artistic designing. Are the contributions of 
artistic specialists needed in the production of : pleasure 
automobiles ; woolen goods for men's suits ; men's collars ; 
business-office furniture ; horseshoes ; school desks ; bricks ; 
wall-papers; railway freight-cars; firearms; carpenters' 
tools; kitchen utensils; containers for packed fruits and 
meats, etc. ? Some such survey as the one indicated would 
greatly aid in the development of programs for vocational 
schools intended to train designers. 



CHAPTER X 

THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY AS A SOCIAL 
SCIENCE STUDY 

From the standpoint of educational sociology the 
study of history occupies a very peculiar place. Certain 
studies of history have, like Latin and mathematics, long 
taken definite traditional forms. No one doubts that 
certain studies in history, as well as a variety of the ma- 
terials from history, will prove essential to a realization 
of many of the specific objectives of social education, 
once these shall have been defined. 

But beyond this all is opinion. The historians and the 
social scientists are far from agreed as to what purposes 
should be served, as well as what can be served by the 
historical studies at particular levels of school education. 
It is here intended first to discuss certain problems that 
naturally arise from the application to the teaching of his- 
tory in our secondary schools of the tests suggested by Mr. 
Abraham Flexner in his pamphlet, "A Modern School." 

" Let us restate our guiding thesis ; modern education 
(as it should be) will include nothing simply because 
tradition recommends it or because its inutility has not 
been conclusively established. It proceeds in precisely the 
opposite way ; it includes nothing for which an affirmative 
case can not now be made out." 

It is designed in the second place to discuss certain 
possibilities of adaptation and readjustment in organiza- 
tion and presentation of the social sciences, including his- 
tory, as means or instruments in secondary education, 
which might render them capable of meeting the standards 
set up by Mr. Flexner. 

207 



2o8 THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY 

I. WHAT IS SCHOOL HISTORY? 

But just what is this secondary-school history which 
we are to examine? What is being taught, and, so far 
as we can ascertain them, what are the objectives con- 
trolling in its teaching? 

In the field of history teaching, as in other fields {e.g., 
science, literature, English language, art) we must expect 
to find substantial gaps between ideals and realizations. 
There have been general committees whose objects have 
been to define in elaborate detail what could or should be 
taught as history (and related) subjects in our schools. 
(Like similar committees in other fields they have usually : 
(a) carefully avoided telling us, except in vague and 
elusive phrase, just why the subject should be taught at 
all; aUd sometimes (b) proceeded in their work on the 
basis of an apparently tacit assumption that their subject 
was one of very serious import in education and that 
therefore they were warranted in claiming, without argu- 
ment, the lion's share almost of school time for it. ) These 
commissions, as well as the numerous individual edu- 
cators and scholars who have set forth suggestions and 
recommendations for the improvement of history teach- 
ing have been, of course, in large part, building for the 
future. But it is very hard — it seems to me now impos- 
sible — to determine just what are the common elements 
in their generalized principles and programs. Is there 
substantial agreement as to any considerable element in 
their proposals ? It does not appear so even if for no other 
reason than that the new crop of competing text-books 
seems to exhibit no evidence to that effect. 

But there is evidence in considerable quantity as to 
what are the standards of aim and accomplishment actu- 
ally imposed on, or accepted by, the rank and file of his- 



WHAT IS SCHOOL HISTORY? 209 

tory teachers to-day. This evidence is abundantly exhib- 
ited in the text-books that find favor among history 
teachers, and in the examinations imposed by external 
agencies whose standards must have a majority approval 
(as against any competing standards equally well defined) 
in order to be acceptable. (Of course, one assumes peren- 
nial dissatisfaction on the part of individuals with these 
standards, as we assume customary dissatisfaction with 
the weather — but it is to possible concerted proposals, to 
cooperatively supported programs for changes, that ref- 
erence is here made.) 

If now we turn to the texts in current use, and very 
literally adhered to by the large majority of history teach- 
ers,' we find certain characteristics of organization sub- 
stantially common to all — and these, it must be assumed, 
constitute the heart or core of history as a school subject 
approved by history teachers to-day. We note the com- 
prehensiveness of treatment ; the dominance of the chrono- 
logical order of presentation; the great inclusiveness of 
detail; the consequent condensation of description and 
explanation; the absence of any suggestion (as a rule) of 
cross reference to contemporary conditions or events that 
might prove illuminating, or interpretive of the historical 
situation under consideration or that might exhibit some 
possible contemporary applications of that which is being 
studied; and the uniform implicit expectations that " mas- 
tery " of the subject will consist chiefly in the kind of 
memorization that results in ability verbally to reproduce 
faithful " copies "of statements given in the books. 

Let us see how far this conclusion is confirmed by the 
tests imposed by that most highly organized and best 
conducted examining body in America, the College En- 
trance Examination Board. (One question is taken from 
each division of the questions for June, 191 6, insuring 
14 



2io THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY 

random selection by taking number i from the first divi- 
sion, number 2 from the second, etc., thus giving ten 
questions out of a total of 112.) 

1. What were the relations of the Hebrews with the Assyrians 
and with the Babylonians? What are the prohibitions enumerated 
in the Ten Commandments? 

2. Who were the leaders of First and Third Crusades? What 
was the result of the First Crusade? What were the general 
effects of the crusades on Europe? 

3. Write on two of the following persons: John Wyclif, 
Thomas Wentworth, John Milton, John Wesley, Robert Give, 
Florence Nightingale. 

4. Explain the slow growth of the Dutch colony, New Nether- 
lands, and describe the effort made to increase the population. 

5. Was Athens in the right in opposing Philip of Macedon? 
Give reasons' for your answer. 

6. Explain the historical connection and allusions of the fol- 
lowing passage: 

" The Pope now rose, as the reading of the Gospel ended, 
advanced to where Charles — who had exchanged his simple 
Frankish dress for the sandals and chlamys of a Roman patrician 
— knelt in prayer by the high altar, and as in the sight of all he 
placed upon the brow of the barbarian chieftain the diadem of 
the Caesars, then bent in obeisance before him, the church rang 
to the shout of the multitude, again free, again the lords and 
center of the world. * * * " 

7. What was the policy of the Jacobin party during the French 
Revolution? Were its members high-minded patriots or blood- 
thirsty ruffians? Give reasons for your answer. 

8. Show how the industrial revolution in England influenced 
English politics during the nineteenth century. 

9. How did the national banking system established during 
the Civil War differ from the National Bank incorporated in 1791 ? 

10. What influences that affected Roman life operated to 
make Cicero a different kind of man from Cato the Elder? 

Now it is submitted that the foregoing sample ques- 
tions do indicate quite clearly what are the actual con- 
crete objectives controlling in history teaching to-day. 
Those objectives consist almost wholly and exclusively of 
the memorization of highly concentrated verbal state- 
ments of historical facts and generalizations of almost 
encyclopaedic extent and variety. There is no suggestion 
as to the actual functioning of this concentrated verbal 



WHAT IS SCHOOL HISTORY? 211 

knowledge in the culture and social capacities actually 
required of the citizen living and cooperating in a twen- 
tieth-century democracy. Nor is there any considerable 
suggestion of quest on the part of the examiners after 
information as to the student's mastery of methods of 
rinding historical information in the future. 

What, after all, are the purposes of the kinds of mas- 
tery of history demonstrated by ability successfully to 
"pass" examinations such as these? Are the concep- 
tions of educational values here implicit merely traditional 
in the sense that the term is used by Mr. Flexner or do 
they in some measure rest on a basis of ascertained facts 
as to social values ? 

There have been educators who held it of importance 
that children should " swallow " the dictionary — should 
so memorize all the words and definitions that recourse 
thereafter to the printed page for spellings and meanings 
would be unnecessary. Other educational Utopians have 
similarly proposed complete mental assimiliation of the 
information contained in encyclopaedias. Without doubt, 
the capacity of some minds for verbal cold storage are 
marvelous — as witness those prodigies who have memo- 
rized the Old and New Testaments. 

But these feats and aspirations no more belong to the 
theory of general education than do high pole vaults be- 
long to the sane discussion of rational physical upbuilding. 
Nevertheless, there is something of this Utopianism in the 
claims to-day set forth by the proponents of history study 
in our schools. At least their texts and examinations 
show that they are seeking mental cold storage of many 
thousands of facts on a scale little commensurate, one must 
think, with the needs of real education. Again, we ask, to 
what ends is this knowledge to be accumulated? What 
is it all for? Let us get somewhat back of the old catch 



2i2 THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY 

phrase, " every intelligent man should (or must) 
know this." 

But, before coming to a consideration of what we 
might make of the social sciences, we must tarry to con- 
sider in the field of history the disconcerting effects of the 
teacher who is a genius — who is, one is tempted to say, 
a miracle worker, for truly there are those among them 
who can cajole living waters from stones as hard and 
dry as those wrought upon by Moses. 

2. THE ILLUSIONS DUE TO THE EXCEPTIONAL TEACHER 

It is one of the purposes of sound educational ad- 
ministration (using that term in its broadest sense), once 
the desirable and feasible objectives of education are de- 
termined and defined, to effect such a development and 
adjustment of pedagogical means and methods that the 
realization of these objectives can be achieved with an 
optimum effectiveness and economy (of time and money 
and learner's energy). 

But here many educators are led astray owing to the 
effectiveness of the teacher who is exceptionally successful 
by virtue of certain special native endowments — the " born 
genius," so called. As regards every field of human 
endeavor — trapping, leading armies, gardening, mother- 
ing babies, writing poetry, janitor ship, frying " Maryland 
chicken," and teaching, it is always possible to say of cer- 
tain types of capacity, " It is born, not made." But for 
every field in which much work must be done, it is wholly 
impracticable to wait for the few geniuses. We may, 
indeed, insist that no one shall write poetry for us except 
" born " poets, because the products of the genuine artist 
among poets are capable of almost endless multiplication. 
But we cannot all wait to have our cooking, gardening, 
preaching and teaching done by the geniuses in these call- 



ILLUSIONS DUE TO THE TEACHER 213 

ings ; there is so much to be done that we must entrust most 
of our tasks to those who constitute the " modal " groups 
as respects inherited qualifications for any one of these 
special fields. Hence, when it is sometimes said, ponder- 
ously and importantly, relative to a specific educational 
field, that " everything depends upon the personality of 
the teacher," or " teachers of history are born, not made," 
it is safe to conclude that the speaker is uttering nonsense. 
The work of the world in most lines cannot wait on the 
appearance of the genius, hence programs for that work 
must be based upon the accomplishments possible to the 
modal groups of those likely to* be available for that ser- 
vice, taking account, first, of native capacities, and, sec- 
ond, of adaptation and training. 

This is not a digression from the principal theme of 
this chapter. Warning against the illusions arising from 
the presence among history teachers, from time to time, 
of the " born " teacher is an essential part of the dis- 
cussion. Witnessing the ability of this genius to make 
any field of history study and teaching interesting, even 
fascinating, to classes of average pupils, we are tempted 
to say to all history teachers, " Go thou and do likewise." 
One is reminded of the story of the great Shakespearean 
actor who, undertaking to combine rebuke and example 
to a pitifully weak player of a minor part, by himself 
reciting the super's lines in a full, splendid voice, was met 
by the piping reply, " If I could say it that way, do you 
think I would be playing here for twenty shillings a 
a week ? " 

There are teachers — and among them history teachers 
— who can make the most abstract and alien subjects allur- 
ing to children. Even bitter portions of intellectual food 
or doses of spiritual medicine may, in the emulsions pro- 
duced by the magnetic personality of an enthusiastic 



2i 4 THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY 

teacher, become very palatable, even much to be desired, 
as are modern sophistications by the chemist of cod liver 
and castor oils. One has in mind those rare teachers of 
ancient history, for example — a field remote indeed from 
the apperceptive bases of knowledge and interests of 
fifteen-year-old boys and girls — who can take the rock-like 
formations of text-books and extract from them scintil- 
lating metals. These teachers have, usually, marked 
powers of reaching instinctively the buried interests, ap- 
preciations and curiosities of their pupils. They have an 
almost magical capacity of making the past live in the 
present. One sometimes thinks that if all their conversa- 
tion were only nonsense syllables, it would nevertheless 
hold their little disciples spellbound, so warm and winning 
are their voices and faces, so hypnotically contagious 
theiFenthusiasms. 

But to assume that teachers in general can do what 
these exceptionally gifted teachers are able easily to do 
would be as reasonable as to assume that any farm boy 
can become a Lincoln, any artisan's son an Edison, or any 
one of us a Whitman, Whistler or Forbes-Robertson. It 
is not only unfair, but also' very poor educational admin- 
istration, to assume that because some teachers have been 
visited by a fairy giver of gifts and can therefore extract 
sunbeams from the Gallic War, from quadratic equations 
with two or more unknown quantities, from the clashes of 
Guelphs and Ghibellines or from the De Coverley Papers, 
other teachers in general ought to be able to interest 
pupils in these subjects, and convince them that serious 
lacunae will always exist in their culture if they do not 
enter enthusiastically into these barren fields. 

In history no* less than in physics, mathematics, Eng- 
lish literature, Greek drama and mechanical drawing, there 
are areas that present great difficulties to the minds of 



ILLUSIONS DUE TO THE TEACHER 215 

well-informed adults, and which may prove not only very 
difficult, but exceedingly repellent to the fresher curiosity 
and more pragmatic learning interests of youths. Under 
compulsion, of course, children will painfully acquire 
a verbal grasp of the compressed descriptions of the social 
transitions, dynastic confusions, sanguinary episodes and 
economic complications that occupy so large a part of the 
texts which endeavor to present all that is significant and 
important in the years elapsing between dates hundreds, 
perhaps thousands, of years apart. 

But from the field of history no less than from other 
fields of organized knowledge, appreciation and achieve- 
ment, it is practicable to derive endless materials suited 
to the purposes of education and adapted to the learning 
capacities, natural or constrained, of groups of children 
of all ages and conditions. It has long been accepted that 
for workers belonging to modal groups in any field, 
there is to be discovered an optimum " speeding up/' 
an optimum length of working day, an optimum 
amount of supervision whereunder to produce best 
results. Similarly, having in view teachers belonging to 
modal groups as regards native capacity and acquired 
powers, there are to be found optimum conditions as 
regards the organization and presentation of subject 
matter for purposes of a maximum result in education. 
The methods of the geniuses, the rare teachers, may prove 
suggestive in determining these optimum conditions. 
These methods should be studied — and the geniuses should 
be gathered into conference, where practicable, so> that 
the common elements in their successful methods can be 
found. But when all this has been done, methods adapted 
to teachers of good average ability will still have to be 
devised and tested. 



2 i6 THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY 

3. THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN SECONDARY EDUCATION 

Obviously there are strong possibilities of funda- 
mental revisions of our social-science teaching of youths 
from twelve to sixteen within the next few years. It is 
certain that, in very considerable measure, the present 
teachers of history and related subjects will lead in that 
work of revision and will equip themselves to do the new 
work that society will demand in social-science teaching. 
Even now it is, therefore, proper and profitable sanely to 
criticize and evaluate our present standards and prac- 
tices, and to set forth proposals looking to making better 
use of the resources which are placed at our disposal to 
make education more effective. First, can we agree upon 
the following general considerations? 

1. While it cannot be successfully disputed that the 
objectives or demonstrably valuable purposes of history 
instruction, or any particular division or field thereof, 
are as yet very obscure and confused, it should be recog- 
nized that the same statement will hold almost equally 
true of the other established traditional " subjects " of 
secondary education. In the main, their supposed im- 
portance as means of education rest on considerations 
developed largely in the days of educational faith. 

2. To question the importance or value of history 
(or any particular area or type of organization thereof) 
as a means or instrument of secondary education for all, 
or for some classes, is certainly not to question the im- 
portance or attractiveness of the recording, interpretation 
or study of history by others than secondary school stu- 
dents, or even, under some circumstances, when more 
pressing educational needs have been met, by some inter- 
ested secondary-school students themselves. But school 
education, and especially that supported by public funds, 



SOCIAL SCIENCES 217 

must in the last analysis be determined as to its character, 
range and application, by practical considerations, derived 
primarily from understanding of the urgent needs of 
society for right personal and social competence, culture 
and disposition in its members. 

3. It is assumed here that history can be included as 
one of the forms in which organized and tested knowledge 
of social activities, past, present and future, can be pre- 
sented — as one of the social sciences. It is recognized, 
of course, that history, being concerned with events or 
individualized social occurrences, must in its purposes 
and its use of scientific methods differ very greatly from 
other social sciences where the quest for laws, principles, 
generalizations, and the means of social control to be 
derived therefrom, are primary considerations. By con- 
sequence, the criteria of scientific method in history, of the 
materials it should most fully employ, and of its service- 
ability to man must differ greatly from the criteria which 
are appropriate to the other social sciences — which are 
taken here to include sociology, economics, civics, anthro- 
pology, ethnology, social ethics, etc. 

4. That the supplanting of faith objectives by objec- 
tives based upon ascertained facts as to learning capacities 
of individuals and those requirements of society which 
can be met by education of the young, will rapidly pro- 
ceed in the near future, can scarcely be doubted. The 
definite study, and comparative evaluation, of objectives 
and methods in the various departments of primary educa- 
tion is now proceeding apace. The recent rapid develop- 
ment of public interest in, and support of, secondary 
education, coupled with widely prevalent skepticism as to 
the comparative values of the means and methods now 
generally employed in secondary schools, brings American 
education to the point where the " hold-backs " must yield 



218 THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY 

and the progressives find encouragement, at least so- far 
as the prosecution of systematic inquiries regarding edu- 
cationally most valid ways and means is concerned. 

4. A POSSIBLE METHOD OF DETERMINING THE OBJECTIVES 
OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

In the ages of educational faith, which are now draw- 
ing to a close, it has been the case that in most instances 
the character of any particular organization of subject 
matter determined the educational objectives that should, 
or even could, be realized through it. Henceforth, as 
must be obvious to any careful student of current educa- 
tional theory, the demonstrated needs of society and of 
individuals must determine these objectives. The study 
of history, for example, can no longer be regarded as an 
end in itself, but must be taken and used as a means— as a 
means to the realization of ends, yet obscure, it is true, but 
nevertheless capable of being appreciated with, constantly 
increasing certitude, defined with greater exactness, and 
evaluated with greater precision. 

What are some of these ends or objectives ? It is sug- 
gested that the following might prove to be a profitable 
method of resolving at least some of them out of the chaos 
of individual and social psychology in which they are 
now buried. 

Let us take at random one hundred'' men of from 
thirty to forty years of age. Let us rank these hundred 
men in a series from lowest to highest according to the 
consensus of opinion of several competent judges directed 
to base their decisions on the extent to which each indi- 
vidual of the hundred is a cultivated man and a good 
citizen, using, as far as practicable, what the world holds 
as approved qualities of these descriptions. Having our 
one hundred men ranked in order, let us call the twenty 



METHOD OF DETERMINING OBJECTIVES 219 

highest, A grade men, the next thirty, B grade men, the 
next thirty, C grade men, and the lowest twenty, D 
grade men. 

The B grade men, obviously, are all above the average, 
as judged by the standards set up, but they are not ex- 
ceptional. Let us now ascertain what these B grade men 
possess, exhibit, or express in action, of cultural qualities, 
on the one hand, and of civic qualities, on the other (the 
words cultural and civic being each taken in somewhat 
restricted and mutually exclusive senses) that can in any 
way be connected with education in the social sciences, 
whether obtained in, or out of, schools. Let us find what 
is common in the knowledge or appreciation they now 
possess. What portions of this knowledge or appreciation 
are still vitally significant, and what are in a true sense 
simply intellectual junk? Furthermore, of what defi- 
ciencies are these men conscious, and what are the prob- 
able important deficiencies in their cultural and civic 
equipment of which they are unconscious, but which would 
be revealed by critical study of their social fitness and 
personal development ? 

For example, all of these men know something about 
the history of the United States prior to 1790 — little or 
much. What are the elements in the knowledge common 
to many of them? What are the common cultural inter- 
ests and attitudes possessed by them which are to* be 
ascribed to that knowledge ? To what extent and in what 
ways are their various forms of civic behavior and moral 
conduct based upon their knowledge and appreciation of 
the events that took place in the history of their country 
prior to 1790? Again, to what extent are these B grade 
men conscious that they have an unsatisfactory equipment 
of knowledge and appreciation of the history of this 
period? Or, using external approaches now, to what 



220 THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY 

extent could it be shown that their lives are essentially in- 
complete and unsatisfactory to themselves and to the so- 
ciety of which they are members because of deficiencies of 
their education as respects the period under consideration ? 

The method here suggested, however obscure and un- 
certain it may now appear, is one that will probably be 
more and more used as a substitute for our present reli- 
ance upon dogmas, a priori guesses, and aspirations as 
regards the field of social-science instruction. Let us take 
one other illustration: 

It will readily be admitted that emigration and immi- 
gration or the migration of peoples, as it affects the United 
States, is a subject that ought to appeal to the intellectual 
and even aesthetic imagination of many. Furthermore, it 
musFbe obvious that the effectiveness of any man's be- 
havior as a citizen of this country during the next gen- 
eration will depend in important measure upon his general 
and specific attitude towards, and his correct and detailed 
understanding of, the numerous problems involved in the 
migration of peoples. 

Again, we find that all our B grade citizens know 
something about migrations, although, as a critic would 
sarcastically observe, they probably know many things 
that are not so. They all have what might be called cul- 
tural interests in the subject. When the time comes to 
influence social behavior as regards migration and those 
who do or do not migrate, all these B grade men con- 
tribute their share of feeling, knowledge and action to the 
discussion, formulation and execution of policies and the 
performance of innumerable concrete social acts. 

Whence, then, have our thirty B grade men derived 
their present appreciations and knowledge of questions of 
migration? Of what deficiencies are they conscious? Of 
what deficiencies in them are we, looking on from outside, 



ALLOWANCES FOR SOCIAL EDUCATION 221 

and with presumably sharpened social insight, aware? 
What inferences could we make as to what the schools of 
to-day should do for the next generation? 

Suppose, now, that a fairly complete social survey 
of the character here illustrated could be made, to cover 
all our classes of adults; would it probably prove possible 
for us, on that basis, to determine a series of educational 
objectives that could best be realized through school in- 
struction and training in the social sciences, especially 
adapted to the educational requirements (as determined in 
part by the needs of society) and learning capacities of 
youths from twelve to eighteen, taking account of our 
possibilities of using that material both for cultural and 
for civic purposes — it being assumed that these purposes 
are certainly not congruent, though perhaps in some 
measure overlapping? 

Following such procedure, we should be able to define 
a very acceptable scheme of objectives, so definite that they 
would readily suggest the means and methods by which 
they could be realized. At the same time, we should find 
means of evaluating the objectives which have already 
become traditional in our schools. 

But it is first essential that we should agree upon the 
amount of time that ought properly to be available for 
this department of education. 

5. TIME ALLOWANCES FOR SOCIAL EDUCATION 

I. In order to obtain a basis whereon to establish a 
series of propositions for a program of educational ob- 
jectives in the social sciences let us assume that in the 
six years of the youth's life from twelve to* eighteen, the 
school can claim a total of 8400 hours, to cover every 
form of general (as opposed to vocational) school educa- 
tion — physical, social and cultural and including both the 



222 THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY 

" free " or " natural " types (high-grade play, intellectual 
nurture taken otherwise than by " forcible feeding " ) and 
the directed, constrained, and, under some circumstances, 
" forcible feeding " education. 

Of these 8400 hours — or a proportionate part thereof 
for pupils terminating their general education earlier than 
the eighteenth birthday — let us assume that educational 
administrators find themselves ready to recommend that 
normally, 12 per cent, or, roughly, 1000 hours should be 
given all forms of social education, including thereunder 
civic and moral training, instruction in the social sciences, 
including history and other forms of conscious and pur- 
poseful education towards citizenship, in so far as that 
involves in any degree the group of studies and pro- 
cedures we have here under consideration. This does not 
mean that in a school system having flexible curricula 
every pupil would give 1000 hours to these studies — some 
might give more, some would probably give less; but, in 
the process of distributing the time available for general 
education among the various divisions, such as physical 
training and instruction, education in English language, 
English literature, the sciences, fine arts, practical arts, 
mathematics, mental sciences and foreign language, it 
might be expected that under normal circumstances one- 
eighth of all available time of learners would in general be 
available for the social-science field. 

2. What disposition shall we make of our 1000 hours? 
In the first place, it is probable that when we shall have 
defined a series of desirable objectives, on the basis of our 
studies, partly of B grade men as they now are, and partly 
of B grade men as society (advised by teachers of social 
science) would have them in the next generation, we shall 
find it profitable and desirable to differentiate our ways 
and means into two classes, according as they belong in 



ALLOWANCES FOR SOCIAL EDUCATION 223 

the category of " natural," " free " or " high-grade play " 
learning, or as they belong in the category of directed 
" work " learning. 

For some areas of economics, ethics, civics and history, 
it may prove most serviceable to employ those activities 
which are most nearly instinctive or spontaneous in ac- 
quiring the appreciation, insight and ideals that will prove 
most worth while. To these ends, school self-government, 
excursions, attendance on prearranged moving-picture 
exhibitions, and reading of attractively written biog- 
raphies and historical fiction may prove the best means. 
But for other areas of social science education it may 
prove most profitable to employ highly organized and, 
perhaps, very " dry " materials, such as we now find in 
text-books on history, economics and civil government. 
We should, of course, hardly expect to do> this because of 
our devotion to the principle implied in Mr. Dooley's dic- 
tum that " It doesn't matter what you teach a boy so 
long as he doesn't like it." Rather, we would set our 
learners at this " hard work " learning because of defi- 
nitely foreseen useful ends to be achieved in the cultural 
interests or civic capacities of those men and women of 
the future whom our learners are to become. Presumably, 
we shall not always have to hold purely on a faith basis 
our convictions as to these values. It is to be hoped that 
we can have them so clearly defined that we can readily 
persuade our pupils, their parents and the world in gen- 
eral that these are real and tangible values, not, as is now 
too frequently the case, suppositious and, often, 
mythical ones. 

3. It may be assumed, provisionally, (a) that the em- 
ployment of the materials of social science (including his- 
tory, organized knowledge of social facts and principles, 
story, fable, historical fiction, historical moving pictures, 



224 THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY 

etc.) in the education of children under twelve will be in 
accordance with the principles of " natural " education — 
that is, satisfaction of the spontaneous instincts for 
satisfaction of curiosity, intellectual " nurture," etc. ; 
but, that (b) in the education of children from twelve 
to eighteen the use of social science materials will be di- 
rected towards the production in quite purposive and 
definite ways, of certain appreciations, attitudes, under- 
standings and ideals that are believed (and, where pos- 
sible, known) to bear in important measure upon the good 
citizenship and personal culture that should be expected of 
intelligent men and women living in a twentieth- 
century democracy. 

During the earlier childhood period, the controlling 
purposes as regards social science materials, should prob- 
ably be intellectual nurture, the general satisfaction of the 
natural instincts looking to the building of a world of 
experience. Folk-lore, tales, fables, stories of adventure, 
dramatically portrayed episodes in history, character 
studies — all these from the field of the past can be woven 
in with materials interpretive of the child's social environ- 
ment, and the age in which he lives to the end of helping 
him feel and know something more of the social milieu 
of which he is a part than he can obtain only from con- 
crete human contacts and associations. Little, if any, 
of this material can profitably be forced on the learner. 
Chronological stages and sequences can be given only the 
slight emphasis indicated by " long ago," " once upon a 
time," " before you were born," " when Indians lived all 
round here," " before Christ was born." The " attitudes " 
to be further developed through the use of this material 
are the simple virtues, the production of which has already 
begun in the home and school social environment — appre- 
ciation and approval of heroic conduct, sympathy for the 



ALLOWANCES FOR SOCIAL EDUCATION 225 

wronged, admiration for devotion and courage, aspira- 
tion for service, etc. Fixed and organized knowledge will 
not be sought as an end of this form of education, but a 
moderate amount of it may be expected as a by-product — 
including the beginnings of comprehension of chrono- 
logical sequences. Naturally, in this area, no complete 
distinction can be made between materials of social science, 
and those of literature. 

But from twelve to eighteen, while the possibilities of 
fruitful " natural " learning, to be realized no less from 
conscious interpretation of social environment than from 
abundant reading and other apprehension of " attractive " 
materials must not be ignored, nevertheless, the time has 
arrived to use some social science materials for socially 
and culturally " pragmatic " purposes. Certainly, valu- 
able ends of social (civic, ethical, moral) as well as cul- 
tural education can be defined which can best be achieved 
by direct and purposeful use of carefully organized ma- 
terials chosen from the wealth of sociological (including 
political, economic, ethical) and historical (including con- 
temporary) knowledge. * 

4. Let us assume that one large, composite aim of 
direct education of youths from twelve to eighteen years 
of age is good citizenship — using that term in a slightly 
restricted sense, as chiefly indicative of approved kinds 
and degrees of those habits, understandings, ideals and 
motives under which we usually place various types of 
truthfulness, honesty, toleration, respect for and submis- 
sion to law, respect for voluntarily assumed obligations, 
sociability, sexual continence, control of anger, and dis- 
position to give a tithe of time and energy to social 
service not directly commandeered. This composite moral 
or social aim of education — training for citizenship — is 
not necessarily the most important aim of education, nor 
15 



226 THE OBJECTIVES OP HISTORY 

is it one that can be realized except in part by the pro- 
cedures customary and appropriate to the direct education 
of schools. Nevertheless, it is one of very important aims 
of school education, and certainly schools should assume 
greater responsibilities than has heretofore been the case 
in cooperating towards its effective realization. 

Now, in education for citizenship, we must first take 
account, for some purposes, of the potential, and for other 
purposes of the actual, social (including moral, civic, 
ethical, humane and socio-religious) by-education of 
home, church, workshop, press, stage, police-power, street, 
club and other distinctly socializing agencies. 

We should then be able to describe — possibly to delimit 
— some of the objectives of this social education that under 
present conditions can only be realized through the di- 
rected efforts of schools, or of other agencies, e.g., Boy 
Scout organizations, camps, boys' clubs, etc. — organized 
primarily for education. Contributions to realization of 
these will be developed through the social or civic group- 
ings made possible and the moral behavior required in and 
about the school — government externally enforced, or 
self-imposed; the cooperations and competitions of ath- 
letics; the clique and gang formations; the social inter- 
course of the two sexes. 

We should be able also to delimit other objectives that 
can be realized only through the intellectual apprehension 
in quite definite ways of facts and principles of that social 
life which is of to-day or which, quite obviously, lies not 
far ahead. The citizen of to-day, very certainly, is called 
upon to understand, and in part to affect, the making of 
our foreign policies towards foreign nations as well as 
private business policies, in innumerable directions where 
economic, political, ethical, penal, and educational prin- 
ciples are involved. 



PROBLEMS OF DEFINING OBJECTIVES 227 

Finally, it may be that in some or all of these fields 
he should have a background of fairly exact historical 
knowledge. What are some of the problems involved ? 

6. PROBLEMS OF DEFINING OBJECTIVES 

Probably a profitable course for many of us to follow 
to-day in the effort to define, delimit and organize con- 
crete objectives for the social sciences, including history, 
in the secondary school would be to state as clearly as 
practicable the problems involved. In the first instance, 
many of these could be stated simply as questions. 
For example : 

1. Are the desirable primary purposes of social science 
education to be found in that field of education which 
has to do with the formation of the moral man, the social 
member of society? And, therefore, are the purposes of 
social-science study having to do with vocational efficiency 
and cultured personality to be regarded throughout as 
secondary, or incidental, at least from the standpoint of 
publicly supported education ? 

2. To what extent is it desirable, from the standpoint 
of comparative educational values, that youths from 
twelve to eighteen should "learn" (in accordance with 
the " good " among prevailing standards) the vast range 
of facts and summarized generalizations now compressed 
into text-books on history and given concrete effect, as 
educational demands, in examinations? 

3. What is meant by " the unity of history " as that 
can be apperceived or otherwise realized by young people 
of average capacity from twelve to fourteen years of age? 
Having regard to it as a fairly definite conception for 
any division of history — e.g., world history, Egyptian 
history, history of Massachusetts, English political his- 



228 THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY 

tory of the nineteenth century — by what means can it best 
be realized by or on behalf of young people? 

4. For twentieth-century western democracy it is 
doubtless of much importance that fairly concrete concep- 
tions be established in the minds of the young as to social 
evolution, social progress, history as development, the 
rolling up of the social inheritance, the increasing differ- 
entiation of society, etc. ; how can these best be established 
—through history as now taught, through the present 
materials of school history better taught, through a simple 
concrete sociology as not yet organized, or through special 
means adapted ad hoc to these important objectives? 

5. Assuming that the primary purposes of all social 
education are pragmatic, as directed towards the making 
of good citizens, why should it not prove practicable and 
economical almost completely to abandon the extensive 
study of chronologically organized and inclusive history, 
and substitute therefor only the study of the historical 
facts and background of those particular social situations 
that, for other reasons, might be under study by the learner 
at any one time ? 

6. Can we devise a series of concrete objectives in 
social science, adapted to different ages of pupils, all 
deserving to be handled by "hard" study methods (as 
opposed to " high-grade play " methods) and the study of 
which will result in a really " functioning " knowledge 
for citizenship? 

7. Can we develop as a special objective to 
which can be given an average of twenty to fifty learn- 
ing hours yearly the learning of the chronology of 
momentous events? 

8. Can we also develop as a special objective for 
consideration each year the development of appreciation 
and some methods of control, of scientific method as 



SOME SURMISES AND HYPOTHESES 229 

applicable primarily to historical data and records — espe- 
cially of that which is contemporaneous? 

9. To what extent and by what methods can we real- 
ize some of the important ends of social education through 
pursuit of objectives so designed as to permit largest use 
of "high-grade play" education (interesting reading, 
moving and other pictures, explorations, lectures, de- 
bates, etc. ) ? 

10. Also, to what extent and under what cir- 
cumstances can we realize valuable cultural ends of 
social science study as independent objectives of " high- 
grade play " education? 

These problems are capable to an indefinite extent of 
being further analyzed and added to. 

7. SOME SURMISES AND HYPOTHESES 

For the sake of provoking discussion, and as a means 
of expressing one individual's opinion, the writer ven- 
tures, but without intentional dogmatism, to suggest be- 
low certain possible methods of approaching and solving 
some of the problems stated in the previous section. It is 
respectfully suggested that some of the detailed problems 
here raised are important enough to deserve concerted 
study on the part of specialists engaged in teaching, or 
otherwise interested in, the social sciences as means of 
secondary education. 

1. Without doubt, one of the important fields of edu- 
cation and especially that of young people from twelve to 
eighteen years of age, has as its functional end the estab- 
lishment of certain habits and attitudes, the development 
of appreciations and sentiments, the imparting of organ- 
ized knowledge and the creating of aspirations and ideals 
which have to do with what we call social conduct, par- 
ticularly as this affects group relationships. This is a 



2 3 o THE OBJECTIVES OF^HISTORY 

division of education in large measure distinct from voca- 
tional education, from all that cultural education which 
has to' do with the development of aesthetic and intellec- 
tual interests of a personal nature, and from physical edu- 
cation. We can otherwise name our objectives as moral, 
civic, humane, ethical, religious. We may readily assume, 
on the basis of analyses such as those made by Ross in 
" Social Control," that as a society comes to include more 
members, as its activities specialize, and its dependence 
upon friendliness and cooperation among its members 
increases the field for social education will increase rather 
than diminish. This explains contemporary solicitude for 
better training for citizenship, for (moral) character 
formation, for study of nations towards ends of mutual 
understanding, and for greater social insight in general. 
We may or may not assume that religion as an instru- 
mentality of socialization is less effective than formerly. 
It would be in accord with sound sociology to assume that 
in the sphere of socialization the dominance of custom, 
fixed attitudes of mind, and dogma, tend steadily to yield 
to rational understandings, and actions on the basis of 
individual initiative. 

Here, then, do we find the chief justification of all 
forms of education in social science — our functioning ob- 
jectives must be directed primarily towards social conduct. 
This is particularly true of all education supported by 
public funds. The study of history or any other social 
science for purely cultural reasons or as a high-grade 
diversion may be permitted to, or encouraged on behalf 
of, a few ; but the study of social science in the interests 
of democratic citizenship in a highly complex civilization 
must be directed chiefly towards pragmatic ends — not, of 
course, in the narrowly utilitarian, but rather in the 
higher social sense. 



SOME SURMISES AND HYPOTHESES 231 

We can assume, too, with good reason that the pur- 
suit of these social ends will give, as important and en- 
during by-products, certain cultural appreciations and 
interests that will be by no means negligible. Our higher 
institutions of learning may well seize upon these cultural 
interests on the part of the relatively few who will mani- 
fest them and carry their development very far, par- 
ticularly as a means of recruiting the number of those who 
can bring creative insight to the social work of the future. 

2. There are many good reasons for believing that 
the study of history as now organized for our various 
schools is greatly, if not almost hopelessly, overloaded 
with materials that, in view of proper functioning stand- 
ards for social-science education, are of no substantial 
worth. A critical examination of text-books and of 
examination questions ought to suffice as convincing evi- 
dence in support of this contention. An examination of 
the intellectual content of educated men and women five 
years after they have left high school or college would 
also* add convincing evidence as to how little of this ma- 
terial has really laid foundations for permanent insight 
or appreciation. It is contended that, in spite of intentions 
to the contrary, text-book makers, teachers of history, 
writers of outlines and examining boards have been guided 
almost exclusively in their work by the assumed import- 
ance of memorized mastery of the encyclopaedic details of 
history. They have feared to omit anything that from 
the historian's standpoint might seem important. The 
resulting condensation of materials as the basis for teach- 
ing almost inevitably produces intellectual, non-assim- 
ilation, indigestion, apathy, and even antipathy. The 
existing situation as regards history teaching itself 
is not susceptible of improvement as long as the 
underlying aims governing in the organization and pres- 



232 THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY 

entation of the materials of history control. Only by an 
almost complete change of front, by the development of 
a wholly new set of objectives, can we evolve the standards 
in the light of which it will be possible to organize his- 
tory teaching in the future towards more definitely 
functional ends. 

3. The writers of history tend inevitably to group the 
materials which they organize and present, in certain 
wholes in accordance with principles which appeal to them 
as economical, forceful and logical. A great event or 
epoch-centering character — a retreat, a conquest, an ex- 
ploration, a dynasty, a catastrophic battle, a Caesar, Charle- 
magne or Bismarck — may constitute the theme, and all 
materials are assembled and ranged with a view to making 
that event or personage clearly intelligible and significant 
from the standpoint of the writer. Or the evolution of a 
nation may be made the central theme, contemporaneous 
events in other nations being introduced by a kind of cross 
reference when bearing significantly on events in the 
nation whose history in more or less fullness is being 
written. A third type of organization found often in 
textbooks and epitomes follows down the years the many 
strands presented by nations concurrently evolving. 

For purposes of reference, and as a means of satisfy- 
ing the few intellectually choice spirits who develop keen 
cultural interests in history, as well as, under some circum- 
stances, for purposes of interpretation by mature students, 
the prevailing type forms in which the materials of his- 
tory are organized, offer many advantages. The two 
fundamental elements in this organization obviously are, 
first, chronology, and second, region. Historic events, of 
course, happen in time and in place, and the one event 
can best be related to the other, even if so-called casual 
relationships are not manifest, by means of relationships 



SOME SURMISES AND HYPOTHESES 233 

expressed in terms of time and space. On hardly any 
other considerations, indeed, can we realize for those to 
whom they are important, the " unities " of history — that 
orderly reproduction in book, chart and picture for ready 
comprehension and use of events that happened in some 
sequential order and also in some definite geograph- 
ical order. 

Now, even for comparatively young learners, there 
are, without doubt, some knowledges of chronological 
order, some notions of near and remote, some conceptions 
of sequence of events, which are essential not only to 
orderly understanding of facts, but even to mental satis- 
faction. But, it is contended, the development of a suf- 
ciently adequate notion of chronological order and the 
" unity "of any particular field of history, is something 
that, made a particular objective, can in any particular 
grade be very expeditiously and easily realized. But in 
general, it is probably true that the orderly arrangement 
in mind of events happening in time or space as well as 
perception of their interconnection can only follow upon 
a substantial accumulation of particulars. Hence, prob- 
ably, the most effective educational procedure would be 
that which, during each year of the child's progress on- 
ward in the social sciences, would give by every graphic 
means (and for this purpose, diagrams, charts, models, 
pictures, and even moving pictures can be well utilized) 
interpreting understanding of high points in history, tem- 
poral distances between points, etc. The writer believes 
that an average of twenty hours of instruction per year 
devoted to pursuit of this objective would realize ends 
infinitely more valuable than those now resulting from 
courses as given. 

4. There are a variety of other important objectives to 
be realized through social-science instruction that doubt- 



234 THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY 

less should be obtained in the same way. For example, 
in western twentieth-century democracy, it is doubtless 
of great importance that young people should grasp with 
as much concrete illustrated detail as practicable such gen- 
eralized conceptions as " social evolution," " history of 
development," " progress," " social advance," " the roll- 
ing up of social inheritance," " the increasing differentia- 
tion of society," etc. But here again, it is contended that 
these important conceptions can best be realized by a cer- 
tain amount of temporary focusing of interest and thought 
upon the particular elements involved. By study of the 
growth of type cities like Chicago, Denver, Berlin, Mel- 
bourne, Liverpool within the lifetime of men now living, 
they can come from one point of view very vividly to 
appreciate certain social transformations. The wastage 
of Palestine or northern Africa, the increasing travel 
across the Atlantic, the multiplication of books, the con- 
sumption of cloth, the proportions of people receiving 
the equivalent of a high-school education, the rising stand- 
ards of living of working people, the diminishing number 
of countries permitting slavery — all of these and other 
concrete instances upon which attention can be focused 
will surely serve much more than the slow idea (or 
memorized fact) building processes now followed, to give 
the citizens of day after to-morrow vivid and enduring 
conception of social change, progress or deterioration, 
increasing complexity of society, the accumulation of 
knowledge, etc. In very large measure these are ends 
to be achieved through the study of an adapted sociology 
(including under that general term, economics, civics, 
etc.) with history or historical materials in a subsidiary, 
but nevertheless important, capacity. 

5. We are now confronted by the most fundamental 
problem of all, namely, as to whether in realizing the ends 



SOME SURMISES AND HYPOTHESES 235 

of sound social education, we shall not be obliged in large 
measure to substitute social sciences, exclusive of history, 
for history as it has been heretofore taught. Further- 
more, we shall probably find that we cannot use any of 
the social sciences as logically organized for purposes of 
the most effective social education of young people from 
twelve to eighteen years of age, but shall be obliged to 
develop new methods of pedagogical organization, de- 
pendent in large part upon the formation of large units 
permitting concentration of attack, and adapted to the 
maturity and capacities of those being taught. In every 
case, it would probably be desirable that the learners first 
familiarize themselves with observed facts and practical 
interpretations of social phenomena as accessible in the 
neighborhood and contemporaneously, after which on the 
basis of secondary materials they could proceed to study 
similar phenomena at a distance in both time and space. 
Take, for example, a topic previously referred to, 
namely, the migrations of peoples. The facts and effects 
of some migrations are visible in the immediate vicinity 
of the home of almost any child in America. A variety 
of interpretations of these facts and effects can readily 
be instituted on the basis of observations made in the 
neighborhood. Then the topic may be pursued outward, 
first through the study of contemporary happenings — the 
facts of migration in states at a distance, or in Canada, in 
South Africa, South America, Italy, Bohemia, Ireland, 
can all be studied and tentative conclusions of importance 
formed. From this, it would be natural to proceed to a 
study of migrations of past times — from Ireland and Ger- 
many during the nineteenth century, from England and 
France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
from northern lands to Mediterranean regions in early 
centuries of the Christian era, from Arabia and central 



236 THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY 

Asia at other periods. In this way, the pupil could obtain 
perspective in this subject in the field of social phenomena, 
and at the same time build up a body of knowledges, ap- 
preciations, insight and perhaps ideals that would be of 
service in time of civic need. And furthermore, who can 
deny the possibilities of large intellectual appeal on purely 
cultural basis in the field thus developed? 

Similarly, it should prove possible to treat such large 
topics as : domestic and household customs ; common edu- 
cation ; higher education ; wars ; overseas trade ; overland 
trade ; great cities ; literature ; fine arts ; the family ; types 
of government ; the average citizen as a factor in govern- 
ment; mechanical means of communicating knowledge 
(printing, telegraph, etc.); the harnessing of natural 
forces ; advance of natural sciences ; the place of woman 
in society; the struggle against poverty; spreading of cul- 
ture; causes of national barriers to mutual understand- 
ing, etc. 

It might prove feasible to group these topics some- 
what according to the maturity of the pupils studying 
them, and also in part according to certain natural group- 
ings of subject-matter, provided this last were not pushed 
too far. For example, community civics as a major and 
some history as a minor during the seventh grade ; study 
of contemporary nations with history as a minor, eighth 
grade; economics of production and transportation dur- 
ing the ninth grade; economics of finance and consump- 
tion during the tenth grade ; evolution of cultural agencies, 
eleventh grade; intensive study of democratic govern- 
ment, twelfth grade. These must all be regarded as more 
or less random suggestions made here in anticipation of 
the day when we shall very carefully study the peda- 
gogical and administrative aspects of the ques- 
tions involved. 



SOME SURMISES AND HYPOTHESES 237 

6. Of the objectives suggested above some would 
surely be so organized as to be studied only by the methods 
that have become historically associated with " hard " 
study — memorization, problem solving, and reorganiza- 
tion for purposes of interpretation of scattered materials 
— all belonging to what might be called the " work order " 
of learning. On the other hand, it is clearly necessary 
that in many cases the first approaches to the teaching of 
the subject under consideration should be along the lines 
of general reading, conference, observation, project study, 
and other means of " free " or " high-grade play " order 
of learning, wherein, in the most natural way possible, 
the pupils would gather up and interpret easily accessible 
materials towards knowledge and appreciation. 

7. It may prove highly desirable to organize certain 
large units of learning exclusively on this " natural learn- 
ing " plane. For example, there are certain periods of 
history that might well be apprehended almost wholly 
through the interested reading of historical fiction 
or the witnessing of historical plays or moving- 
picture presentation. Ordinarily, these units would 
belong rather to the field of cultural education than 
to that of social education, but not necessarily always. A 
good book of travel, for instance, might prove an illumi- 
nating supplement to the study of economic phenomena in 
Asia that would be expected to follow a study of economic 
phenomena in the neighborhood. There are many short 
stories to-day which are more vividly interpretive of 
social conditions than are ordinary text-book, or other 
more formal, means of presentation. Following the 
pupil's efforts to understand immigration as a locally im- 
portant phenomenon, a book like one of Steiner's might 
prove not only attractive reading, but very illuminating 
as making contributions to social science. Doubtless, 



238 THE OBJECTIVES OF HISTORY 

numberless opportunities will yet be developed of 
utilizing materials and methods of learning of the kind 
here suggested. 

8. At several stages in the progress of the pupil 
through the social sciences, it would surely prove of 
importance to isolate out as a special objective the de- 
velopment of scientific method as applied in use of his- 
torical records and other data (including especially those 
of contemporary utterance) and to assist the pupil in the 
formation of criteria of valuations and criticism that 
would help him throughout life. The development of ap- 
preciation of scientific method would naturally be in some 
slight degree a by-product of all the social-science work ; 
but this is not sufficient; a focusing of attention upon this 
as a specific problem should be effected at least three or 
four times for periods of some weeks in the progress of 
the pupil from the seventh to the twelfth grades. The 
materials to be used to this end are, like those of social 
science in general, superabundant; the difficulty consists 
in organizing them towards the achieving of valuable 
specific educational ends. Surely, no one of us can con- 
tend that the materials of our history text-books as now 
organized can be used effectively for this purpose. 

9. The use of "high-grade play" (in other chapters 
called the " beta " method of learning) surely needs fur- 
ther development in education, and especially in the field 
of history. This important subject has, however, been 
sufficiently referred to in other sections of this chapter. 

10. The development of cultural interests as some- 
thing distinctively apart from social education, also de- 
serves attention, but, even if our curricula for the upper 
grades make no special provision for these objectives, 
it is certain that learners naturally predisposed to establish 
purely intellectual or aesthetic interests would find suf- 



SOME NEXT STEPS 239 

ficient incentive in the by-products of a scheme of social 
education designed to include only means of realizing 
socially valuable pragmatic purposes. 

8. SOME NEXT STEPS 

Granting the presence among educators of some per- 
sons of creative ability, who have readjusted their atti- 
tudes towards history teaching in the schools along the 
lines suggested above, what may be regarded as important 
next steps towards effecting needed changes in 
school curricula? 

Without doubt, the first necessary step is some form 
of concerted action towards the formulation of detailed 
methods of procedure, to include concrete statements of 
aims to be realized (objectives), forms in which these 
materials may be made available for school purposes, 
and suggestions as to* actual methods of teaching. Here 
especially are to be found large opportunities for the con- 
structive work of small committees, preferably not more 
than three at first, who, after formulation of their find- 
ings, can submit them for criticism and review to 
larger groups. 

A second step of utmost importance is that of experi- 
mental school work, and here it is to be hoped we have 
promise of assistance in the near future. Even the ap- 
proved findings of a committee along lines constituting 
such radical departures as here suggested may be of little 
effect until put into practice through a series of years in 
a school devoted to experimentation. That we have made 
such progress as we have achieved to date without 
experimental schools is, on the one hand, a tribute to 
our ingenunity as a people, and is, on the other, ex- 
planatory of the persistence of custom and the force 
of tradition. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE OBJECTIVES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

I. NEW PROBLEMS 

The making of good citizens in the broadest sense, 
that is, of adults who will contribute to the harmony and 
cooperation needed within the social group, out of plastic 
childhood with its individualistic and " small group " 
instincts, has been a task to which societies appear to 
have addressed themselves since the beginnings of organ- 
ized human life on earth. Education for citizenship is 
simply one phase of the complex process of social con- 
trol. Preparation for citizenship has generally taken 
place in ways unperceived by the learner, and doubtless 
often, too, in ways only partially understood by the 
teacher — as parent, elder, chief, master worker, priest 
or lawgiver; for it is certain that the customs, dogmas, 
traditions, institutions and ideals evolved to perpetuate 
social control have a potency at any given time far beyond 
that which can be perceived and comprehended by 
any individual. 

But the old ways of fitting for citizenship are not suf- 
ficient for the modern world. The citizen of a twentieth- 
century democracy has responsibilities that are both 
greater andjiifferent from those borne by his forefathers. 
It seems very probable, indeed, that the spread of aspira- 
tions for democracy, accompanied by general social de- 
mands for, and approval of, freedom of thought, have 
rendered of small service much of the old machinery of 
social control, and have laid upon us the need of inventing 
and applying new means and methods. 
240 



NEW PROBLEMS 241 

These are the considerations which point to the urgent 
need, in modern societies, of new and more purposeful 
methods of education for citizenship. On the one hand 
we have rapidly developed a social order that is more com- 
plex and delicately adjusted than any with which our 
forefathers were acquainted; and, on the other hand, 
we have wrought certain fundamental changes in social 
insight and ideal, the effect of which is greatly to lessen, 
if not often to nullify, the effectiveness of the historic 
means and methods of social control which had slowly 
been shaped through scores of centuries. Simultaneously 
with the development of new necessities and new de- 
mands, we find ourselves obliged to " scrap " much of 
that long useful machinery, the motive power of which 
was authority. 

Our own country has had, at least from the beginnings 
of our national life, vivid aspirations for good citizenship. 
Where specific programs of action have received general 
approval as means of realizing these apirations, we have 
given them reasonably good support. The development 
of public school systems to insure general literacy has 
been the most conspicuous step in this process. These 
public schools have become steadily more democratic in 
their operation ; they have assured us a nationally homo- 
geneous speech; and in them a large proportion of our 
prospective citizenry have gained at least something of 
historical and geographical perspective. 

becently we have added a few new aims to our 
programs of citizen making. Our homely cbmmon sense 
has long warned us that the jobless or unemployable man 
is rarely a tolerable, and never a good, citizen; but only 
yesterday, historically speaking, did we accept a certain 
collective social responsibility towards insuring that our 
youth shall not mature into untrained or otherwise un- 
16 



242 THE OBJECTIVES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

employable men and women. Our present programs for 
widely distributed opportunities for vocational education 
have not been designed primarily for civic ends; 
but the by-products of their operation will unques- 
tionably contribute effects of the greatest importance to 
good citizenship. 

Then, under the pressure of war, we have come to 
realize the indispensableness of more completely fostering 
and insuring a common language of communication on 
the J>art of those recently accessioned to citizenship. We 
now intend to enforce those of our laws which require 
that all reasonable efforts shall be made by the state, 
and seconded by the elders among our immigrants, to 
insure that the children of these immigrants shall receive 
and hold English as their principal language of social and 
business intercourse. 

Thus far have we translated our aspirations into pro- 
grams of action. But we know that this is not enough. 
We often point to our high schools with their one million 
six hundred thousand pupils — the ablest, best circum- 
stanced, and most promising of all our youth — as poten- 
tial schools of American citizenship. But what, actually, 
do they now accomplish, worthy of their opportunities? 
The adolescent learners in these high schools come from 
good home environments and are predisposed and, in 
nearly all cases, actually predetermined to> be orderly and 
well-conducted men and women. But what are the actual 
contributions made through the high-school curriculum 
to the highest habits, insights, and ideals of good citizen- 
ship expected of these potential leaders? Are civic aims 
explicit or implicit in the mathematical, English language, 
scientific, foreign language, historical and literary sub- 
jects as now standardized in high-school curricula? Can 
we as yet detect any conscious adjustment of subject 



NEW PROBLEMS 243 

matter or methods of instruction towards the better 
attainment of civic aims? Our more progessive high 
schools are offering one or more courses in civics or gov- 
ernment, but even the best of these are poorly oriented 
and show the inevitable abstractions of courses designed 
primarily to convey information. Painstaking analyses 
of the structure and functions of government will not 
take us far. Very exacting studies of contemporary pub- 
lic service problems will not serve if there is no< actively 
cooperating motive. The motivation for the study of 
thousands of pages of history will be fruitless if, as must 
necessarily be generally the case, neither pupils nor 
teachers are able to< reinterpret its messages in terms of 
the social realities of to-day. 

We need programs of civic education especially for 
our young people between twelve and eighteen years of 
age. We need to have a series of the concrete, specific 
problems of that civic education elaborated in detail, to 
the end that experimentation and research may be begun. 
To this end it is desirable that we should frequently take 
new bearings in order to determine as specifically as prac- 
ticable what we mean by good citizenship, and by educa- 
tion for citizenship. Concurrently with these efforts, we 
must constantly seek to discover, formulate and submit 
to trial, new programs and methods designed to meet 
some specific ends in the needed education. 

Every true American recognizes that in matters of 
good citizenship he not only has obligations to meet on 
his own account, but that he is also in large measure the 
keeper of his brother's conscience. Few men are good 
citizens by virtue of the gifts of birth alone; most good 
citizens are made such by the processes of social control 
operated consciously or unconsciously within every social 
group, by the old on the young, the strong on the weak, 



244 THE OBJECTIVES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

the intelligent on the unintelligent, the cooperative on 
the non-cooperative. 

There are a few cardinal propositions relative to citi- 
zenship in a twentieth century democracy which are to- 
day readily assented to by intelligent men everywhere. 
We agree, of course, that a worthy citizen must be, first 
of all, a willing conformist, a faithful team worker, an 
earnest cooperator. But he must be something more — 
something that is in a sense almost the reverse of all these. 
At proper times and places he should refuse to conform, 
to follow the herd, to uphold the laws. He must initiate, 
invent, seek followers, undertake new ventures, rebel, 
even in face of the opposition of his compatriots. 

In many fields of social action which we call civic, 
we can easily see that good will, good intentions, " in- 
stincts for righteousness," are assets of primary import- 
ance in good citizenship; but it is also no less apparent 
that these do not carry far into other fields where issues 
are very complicated, where grounds for honest parti- 
sanship are many, and where the disposition to substitute 
even the highest forms of religious or other emotional 
guidance, for the cool findings of reason may bring 
widespread ruin. 

Can we not agree, too, that in the modern state there 
are few intentionally or consciously bad citizens ? There 
are many self-satisfied, ignorant and lazy citizens. There 
are even more who elect to expend their time, energies 
and aspirations on the " small groups " which they can 
easily understand and fit into — families, clubs, parties, 
towns, vocational unions. But by their own lights these 
men are not lacking in civic virtues. Subconsciously they 
have accepted or made for themselves certain principles 
of division of labor, of " minding their own business," 
of " setting their own house in order," of standing by their 



NEW PROBLEMS 245 

friends, which serve, in their own minds, to exculpate 
them when confronted by charges of bad citizenship. 
These dispositions to revolve, act, and serve solely within 
the social orbits of local component and constituent groups 
is probably still produced and justified in large measure 
by the traditions and vestigial customs surviving into 
modern democracies from ages of autocratic control 
from without. 

Finally, few of us will deny that the scope, variety 
and complexity of the issues upon which a citizen, if he 
be other than a passive conformist, is now called upon to 
pass, are increasing in almost geometrical ratio. It is 
not merely in matters of international relations, national 
finance, and interstate trade that even the well read man 
finds himself constantly balked by insufficient knowledge 
and inadequate interpretation; with the best of intentions 
most of us possess neither time nor ability, apparently, 
to understand the policies and practices of our parties, 
our municipalities, or the economic organizations into 
which we put our labor or invest our savings. In a vague 
way we have learned from our president that never again 
can there be a great war in which America will not have 
vital interests; that economic interdependence among 
nations, widespread and exacting in the claims it pro- 
duces, will be hereafter an inescapable condition for all 
nations; and that somehow we must, for the sake of 
peace and progress, discover the optimum resultants of 
''self-determination" on the one hand, and leagued 
cooperation on the other. But what a prospect of un- 
solved problems these imperatives open up to the average 
well-meaning citizen! Is it any wonder that, confronted 
by current new visions of responsible citizenship, we 
either resolve to " let George do it," or else cut the Gor- 
dian knots with the sword of impulse easily to be found 



246 THE OBJECTIVES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

among our stock of inherited feelings and precon- 
ceived ideas? 

Perhaps those of us who are actively endeavoring to 
reconstruct or improve the processes by which citizens 
are made have not sufficiently realized how brief is the 
span of time of preparation and how limited are the 
energies and abilities of those who constitute the rank and 
file of voters, to say nothing of other citizens. Certainly, 
any well-meant programs oif education for citizenship 
can^ only hope to succeed by taking full account 
of the limiting conditions affecting those whom we seek 
to educate. 

2. SPECIFIC NEEDS OF CIVIC EDUCATION 

One of the new problems of education for citizenship, 
therefore, is that of determining where and to what 
extent, among our various social classes, there now exist 
determinable, even if not fully measurable, defects 
of citizenship. 

In New York City there are now nearly 6,000,000 
people. These can be separably classified as adults and 
children; men and women; rich, prosperous and poor; 
well educated, moderately educated and illiterate; black 
and white; occupationally skilled and occupationally un- 
skilled; unionized and ununionized; employers and em- 
ployees; native born and foreign born. All of these, in 
the broad sense of the term, have been educated for 
citizenship — educated to be bad citizens, educated to be 
indifferent citizens, or educated to be good citizens. They 
have been educated by their homes, their churches, their 
street associations, their political parties, their news- 
papers, their contacts with police, theater and philan- 
thropic agencies; and, finally, by the schools they have 
attended. Much of this education was unintended by 



SPECIFIC NEEDS OP CIVIC EDUCATION 247 

either giver or recipient ; most of it was only incidentally 
purposive; and all of it, substantially, was governed, in 
aim and method, by but slightly rationalized customs and 
traditions, where it was not wholly a matter of impulse 
and chance. 

What are the results of this education as found in 
the citizenry of New York to-day? Surely only a very 
unreasonable pessimist would say they are all bad. Criti- 
cal as we may be of the shortcomings of ourselves and 
especially of our less well-known fellows, we must never- 
theless recognize that a large proportion of our six 
million are trying with some success to observe the laws, 
to prosecute their own business without interfering disas- 
trously with the business of others, and in a thousand 
ways to contribute to the general harmony, good will, 
and prosperity. And on the side of civic initiative the 
situation might, obviously, be much worse than it is. Our 
streets, water supply, parks, police, public schools and 
municipal bookkeeping are not perfect, but neither are 
they hopelessly bad. Our citizens through their votes and 
public opinion have somewhat muddlingly, but neverthe- 
less with considerable efficiency, managed the affairs of 
what is, certainly, an appallingly complex enterprise. 

But we cannot remain content with present accom- 
plishments. The citizenship of to-morrow must be better 
than the citizenship of to-day — for one reason because 
it will certainly have still more difficult tasks to perform. 
Towards securing that better citizenship, in so far as we 
are able to secure it through socially conscious processes, 
including education, it is desirable and in large measure 
necessary, that we should evaluate in terms of distin- 
guishable social groups and specific civic virtues and fail- 
ings, the citizenship which we now have as the result of 



248 THE OBJECTIVES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

the multifarious educative processes of the last 
fifty years. 

For it will be on the basis of the knowledge thus 
obtained, largely, that we are to frame the policies and 
specific programs through which the hundreds of thou- 
sands of boys and girls now in the public schools of this 
city will become better qualified than their fathers and 
mothers to meet civic responsibilities during the years 
from 1920 to 1950. 

^Obviously what is called for now is social diagnosis 
of a more than impressionistic character. Little reliance 
can hereafter be placed on those " cut and try " proposals 
for civic (or any other) education which chiefly reflect the 
philosophical prepossessions of the proposer. In an ex- 
cessively large amount of contemporary discussion of 
various phases of education for citizenship there is mani- 
fested an unquenchable disposition to offer aspirations, 
instead of programs, to evade the difficulties of analytical 
thinking by resting serenely on pious generalizations of 
very equivocal significance. This disposition is not 
wholly unrelated, be it noted, to certain very passionately 
urged specific proposals, usually of a negative or repres- 
sive order, that are especially apt to be made in times of 
social crisis. 

The first problem, then, is that of ascertaining where 
and in what respects the citizenship we now have fails to 
meet social necessities. As respects what civic virtues, 
are our most recent immigrants conspicuously weak? 
Our college graduates in business? Our best educated 
women voters? Our unionized craftsmen? Our semi- 
skilled negro workers? As respects what civic virtues 
are these groups, or sub-groups within them or other 
ascertainable social groups or classes, commendably 
strong? What are the classes or levels or groups in 



FOLLOWERS AS EMPLOYERS 249 

which strong and worthy civic motives of definable kinds 
are accompanied by low or deformed civic understand- 
ing, also of definable types? Where do we find ample 
civic intelligence of stated types, corrupted or nullified by 
low or adverse motives of discernible kinds? 

We need the facts called for by these questions as 
necessary means towards providing more effective pro- 
grams of civic education in or out of schools. Pro- 
grams of civic training and instruction (at least those 
developed since the spread of aspirations for democracy 
and of demands for freedom of thinking have deprived 
us of the great old foundation stones of authority) have 
heretofore rested; on the insecure groundwork of 
a priori thinking; the controlling objectives have been 
ill-defined ; and the methods employed necessarily formal 
and opportunist. 

Given necessary resources, it should be easily possible 
even now to set in motion research that would give us at 
least partial answers to the questions raised above. Mod- 
ern social economy and applied psychology have evolved 
at least some applicable and reliable methods of inquiry. 
It rests w r ith informed public opinion to provide the 
needed motive power. 

3. EDUCATION OF FOLLOWERS AS EMPLOYERS 

The second problem here submitted for your consid- 
eration is of a very different nature. If we are to de- 
velop more systematic education towards good citizenship 
than we now have, we shall be obliged to make use, either 
of existing schools, or of accessory educational agencies 
like the Boy Scouts, moving pictures, public libraries, 
Red Cross service, and the like. In the case of students 
competent and financially able to go to college — and who 
may be expected in large part to be the leaders of the 



250 THE OBJECTIVES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

future, by virtue both of their superior natural abilities 
and their prolonged schooling — an almost bewildering 
variety of courses of instruction in government, econom- 
ics, and other branches of social science is now available. 
Opportunities for directed training for citizenship may 
still be wanting, but certainly there is no dearth of means 
of learning from instruction what are the problems 
of citizenship. 

But in the case of that large majority who never even 
knock at the doors of the colleges — those millions who 
are to constitute the rank and file of citizens whose com- 
pliance and initiative will often, in spite of the intentions 
of better instructed leaders, determine whether we are to 
have a harmonious and progressive democratic social 
order or a faction-torn chaos of warring social groups — 
what can be done, during their school years, towards bet- 
ter preparation for citizenship ? In some respects present- 
day schools are improving their own internal conditions 
of social control, and are thereby making some significant 
contributions, especially to the passive or conformist vir- 
tues of the citizenship of the next generation. The 
schools of to-day, with the possible exception of those 
in a few largest cities, are unquestionably at once more 
democratic and better disciplined, more liberal and more 
orderly, than were the schools of previous generations. 
In spite of the outcries of an occasional alarmist, it is 
certain that the moral life of the American elementary 
school and even more so of the co-educational high school 
is to-day on a higher plane than has even been the case, 
over a considerable time and area, in schools for cor- 
responding classes and ages in the past. 

But orderly or even perfect social behavior during 
school years will not suffice to give us the kind of citizen- 
ship we need for the future, any more than will acquaint- 



FOLLOWERS AS EMPLOYERS 251 

anceship with village topography suffice to guide one in the 
cosmopolitan wanderings of adult life. What we can 
well call the problems confronting the citizen — questions 
and issues of economic, political, ethical, municipal, na- 
tional, international, financial, and sociological nature — 
are increasingly of a kind that cannot be resolved by 
well-intentioned compliance and kindly initiative alone. 
More and more these problems resemble the problems of 
the physician, the engineer, the banker, and the manu- 
facturer. Their strictly scientific aspects — one is tempted 
to say their non-humanistic aspects, meaning thereby, of 
course, their extra-feeling aspects — loom relatively larger 
all the time. Strict publicity, exact justice, scientifically 
adjusted means to well foreseen ends — these are to be 
factors of very large importance in the operation of the 
new social order. 

These considerations bring into relief our second prob- 
lem. For the millions of our prospective citizens who 
can profit only by the education to be offered in our 
elementary and secondary schools it is manifestly imprac- 
ticable to offer instruction calculated to enable them 
independently to form adequate judgments or to arrive 
at sound conclusions in relation to the numberless intricate 
issues as to which the average citizen, at least on election 
day, if not oftener, must perforce make decisions. The 
average man, even when exceptionally well read, now 
frankly confesses his incapacity, through sheer lack of 
time and ability, to act with proper intelligence on the 
questions of municipal, state, national and international 
politics which daily confront him. He is baffled by their 
number and complexity and mortified at his own apparent 
incompetence to deal with them. H. G. Wells, perhaps 
more successfully than any other recent writer, has 
assisted us to appreciate how like a legendary adventure 



252 THE OBJECTIVES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

in a monster-haunted wilderness is the quest of the 
thoughtful man of to-day in his attempts to reach the goal 
of constructive good citizenship amidst the complexities 
of the social order now evolving. 

* What, under these conditions, shall, or what, indeed, 
can, be the practicable objectives of civic instruction in the 
schools? We may not rest back on an authoritarian form 
of procedure, instilling into the hearts and minds of our 
pupils dogmas and fixed prepossessions. That procedure 
stands hopelessly condemned as undemocratic and unscien- 
tific. On the other hand, the futility of trying to enable 
the minds of fourteen- or even eighteen-year-old youth to 
grasp the intricacies of modern social problems is com- 
parable only with the futility of trying to have them 
understand for working purposes the technical complexi- 
ties of modern astronomical, mathematical, engineering, 
medical and architectural problems. And yet, that is just 
what many a harried or emotionally striving teacher of 
history or social science is doing to-day in the schools. 
And in even greater degree that is just what ambitious 
spokesmen for educators and sometimes for laymen are 
recommending shall be done in the schools. Some of the 
requirements implicit in pretentious papers on the " teach- 
ing of citizenship " would be ludicrous if they could be 
crystallized out of the easy language of aspiration in which 
they are held in solution. 

The educational difficulties here indicated are to be 
resolved, probably, only by the development of certain 
new types of educational aim or purpose which have 
hardly appeared as yet in programs of education for citi- 
zenship. We must devise means of convincing our youth 
that their chief responsibilities as active or dynamic citi- 
zens must be met, not through their abilities to solve 
complex problems for themselves, but through their 



FOLLOWERS AS EMPLOYERS 253 

abilities to employ specialists to solve these problems 
for them. 

To a very large extent we do just that thing now in 
another field of education, namely the physical. Here 
our schools aim to prepare children to live healthy lives 
as adults. They do this in part by instructing the children 
how to look after themselves in some minor matters of 
cure and of prevention of ailment; but in much larger 
and more important measure to consult and abide by the 
decisions of specialists. In physical education, it is frankly 
recognized that problems of teeth, tonsils, eyes, ears, 
arches, digestion, and contagion, are far too difficult for 
the average individual himself, that these are matters to 
be delegated to specialists. The effect of this education is 
that among our better schooled classes we finally produce 
a well-defined set of attitudes, capacities and powers which 
can be described in a phrase — the individual has become a 
good employer and user of expert service. The individual 
has not surrendered his initiative or reduced his judgment 
to impotence; but he has differentiated them along lines 
that are most profitable. In other words, he has been 
trained to carry into this area of life the types of perform- 
ance — the specialization of services, and exchange of prod- 
ucts of service — which have long prevailed where more 
material relationships have been involved. 

For we know that, in fact, the relationships which are 
suggested here have always prevailed in politics ; but we 
have not yet learned to make proper use of them in our 
educational programs. The chieftain in clan or tribe was 
given place and honor because of his ability to do what 
his followers could not do. To king or priest were attrib- 
uted powers that ordinary men were not able to exercise. 
Voting has always been in fact much more a collective 
employment of specialists than it has been a conscious 



254 THE OBJECTIVES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

evaluating of policies or determination of programs of 
civic action. 

In purposive education for citizenship, we could, 
therefore, include two principal aims: (a) so to shape the 
individuals appreciations, habits, insights and ideals that 
to an optimum degree he will conform to the requirements 
of the various social groups in which he has membership ; 
and (b) so- to train him that on the dynamic side of his 
citizenship he will consider himself above everything else 
an employer and supervisor of expert service in the num- 
berless fields now comprehended within the general area 
of political action. The second aim would certainly be 
peculiarly suited to learners of secondary-school age, and 
no less well suited to adults ambitious more effectively to 
discharge their responsibilities as citizens. 

Many of us have recently been interested in the efforts 
of women, just admitted to the franchise, to study the 
political problems upon which they expect to pass judg- 
ment at the polls. In most cases, naturally, these women 
have just been able to proceed far enough to become 
aware of the complexity and baffling character of the 
issues involved. However far they are able to penetrate 
into the mazes of municipal ownership, teachers' salaries, 
methods of taxation, state park systems, care of depen- 
dents and the thousand other technical problems that 
everywhere confront voters, they will find that in the 
last analysis courses of action and especially results of 
action will be determined by the competence and honesty 
of the specialists delegated to enact legislation or take 
executive action in these matters. The voter's largest 
problem, obviously, is to assure just this competence and 
honesty on the part of his employees, that is, those whom 
he, in conjunction with others, selects for, and supervises 
in, the performance of particular forms of public service. 



FOLLOWERS AS EMPLOYERS 255 

But if, therefore, we aim in education to make our 
voters good employers of specialist service, we shall be 
obliged at once to determine what are the powers and 
capacities that make of us good employers? Under what 
conditions are you and I good employers of physicians, 
ministers, plumbers, bankers, novelists, cooks, tailors, edi- 
tors, and the like ? In each of these fields we are all con- 
sumers, we must all choose among various offerings, and 
we are aware that the character of our selections of service 
and continued patronage exerts a determining influence on 
the character of the service more extensively hereafter to 
be rendered. 

This is hardly the time or place to analyze the charac- 
teristic qualities of the good employer as he now exists 
in private life; but sooner or later we must do just that 
in the process of determining the qualities we should seek 
to produce in that cooperative employer of public service, 
the voting citizen. Only a few inquiries may be offered 
here as a basis for further reflection, possibly of 
eventual research. 

Granted that an average man has neither time nor 
ability to become simultaneously a good tailor, cook, den- 
tist, and preacher, what kinds and degrees of appreciation, 
knowledge and ideal of tailoring, cooking, dentistry and 
preaching will be required to make him a reasonably effec- 
tive employer (in the social as well as in the strictly indi- 
vidualistic sense) of producers in these respective fields? 
Clearly a man completely without standards and insight 
here cannot be a good chooser, a wise utilizer. Suppose, 
having a limited amount of time at our disposal, we were 
to* address ourselves specifically to the task of making a 
group of adolescent boys or girls good buyers of service, 
good employers in these four fields, what courses would 
or should we follow? Herein, I submit, will be found 



256 THE OBJECTIVES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

some of the keys to education for citizenship in 
the future. 

It should be noted that every moderately cultivated 
adult is to-day the buyer of hundreds of varieties of spe- 
cialist service — ranging 1 from architecture, music and 
literature through engineering, medical and mercantile 
service down to food, clothing and amusements. Pos- 
sibly we have not yet in our educational theory differen- 
tiated high grade utilization along these lines as a com- 
prehensive aim of primary importance. Hence we are 
still easily victimized by the contentions of Utopians that 
we can only become good utilizers — of paintings, or furni- 
ture or newspapers — through having at least attempted 
to master the arts of the producer in each of these fields. 

The analogies — it is here contended that they are paral- 
lels — in education for citizenship are plain. The citizen, 
as stockholder in the commonwealth, must elect directors 
(very foolishly he often attempts, what stockholders in pri- 
vate corporations never do, namely, to elect technical spe- 
cialists as well) and in so doing provide for the discharge 
of literally hundreds of functions, each of an increasingly 
complicated character. Somewhere and somehow, if he 
is to discharge his responsibilities well, he must have 
become so informed as to the requirements of the work 
to be done, and of the qualities of the men available to do 
it that he can choose and direct his servants in these fields 
as well as he selects and directs his dentist, editor, or 
steamship captain. 

Difficult pedagogical problems are doubtless involved 
in this field of education, but surely the ends in view are 
far more practicable than those supporting the illusory 
procedures now so frequently found in our schools in 
which we expect study of American history, the Consti- 
tution of the United States and the complex mechanisms 



SPECIAL PROBLEMS 257 

of municipal government to give the student ability to 
comprehend and solve the problems upon which he must 
pass as voter. " Every man his own physician " would not 
be a more unjustifiable principle of action than that of 
encouraging each man as a voter to trust his own judg- 
ment of complex issues rather than of a specialist whom 
he freely and intelligently should choose. The pedagogical 
difficulties involved in educating citizens to appreciate the 
importance, to understand the methods, and to experience 
the motives making for such right choice of service are by 
no means insurmountable, once the goals to be attained 
are clearly defined. 

4. SPECIAL PROBLEMS 

Of the making of books and especially of articles on 
ethical, moral, and civic education there is surely no end. 
This area is still one of the favorite hunting grounds of the 
speculative philosopher — in fact it is one of the few wil- 
dernesses in which he can still find game. Some day 
sociology will survey and settle the entire region, and 
set the wild game off in a preserve; but that time has 
not come yet. 

In the meantime, of course, men must live ; and to live 
they must act; and to act they must think and govern, 
however crudely ; and to think and govern they must be 
taught, however sketchily and blindly. Hence we find 
that from the beginning of human group life there has 
been a great deal of moral and civic education, usually 
the by-education given by parents and other associates in 
pursuit of economic, social, religious, and governmental 
ends. That education, in all past ages, crystallized into 
endless customs, traditions, taboos, laws, conventions, 
beliefs, ideals and knowledge; it begot numberless forms 
of institutions, and forms of social organization. Ross' 
17 



258 THE OBJECTIVES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

" Social Control," Cooky's " Social Process " and Sum- 
mer's " Folk Ways," to name only three American 
contributions, give us bewildering panoramas of the com- 
plexity of the processes by which man has ever sought to 
domesticate and civilize himself and his offspring for 
the group life and more particularly for the life of the 
larger political and economic groups. 

These processes assumed spectacular magnitude when 
the foundations of modern civilization were laid in the 
fertile areas of the earth by conquest, when aggressive 
peoples overwhelmed and undertook to govern passive 
tillers of the soil. Social control was then built in tower- 
ing structures on the foundation walls of authority — au- 
thority over mind no less than over body. Family life, 
religious life, government, economic differentiation, edu- 
cation, all built their strongest and most enduring struc- 
tures on the stones of authority. Some of these 
structures have survived to the present, at least as gigantic 
ruins that yet almost defy the modern tools of democracy 
and free thought. 

However much we may criticize the mediaeval authori- 
tarian order of social control, we must admit that it de- 
veloped wonderfully Competent-looking mechanisms of 
moral and civic education, and it is with much regret that 
educators, parents and influential citizens come to realize 
that we shall have to " scrap " so much of this machinery 
— corporal punishment, dogmas, fires of Sheol, military 
discipline, ceremonials, caste, art-control of emotions, re- 
stricted suffrage, " es ist verboten" "the Golden Age be- 
hind," and the rest. 

In a very real sense, indeed, we shall have to start 
again building from the bottom the structures of social 
control, including all means of an educational nature. 
Instead of building on the solid granite of authority we 



SOCIAL GROUP DIAGNOSIS 259 

must build upon what some feel to be the shifting sands 
of free thought and free speech. Instead of the right 
angled and rigid institutions of aristocracy, caste, auto- 
cratic government, primogeniture, hierarchical church, 
changeless constitutions, divinely sanctioned laws, we 
shall be forced to build apparently amorphous and 
unstable structures — living and growing bodies, let 
us hope — embodying as life principles, democracy, 
universal suffrage, freedom of migration, upward striv- 
ing proletarianism. 

With little light to guide us we must face the problems 
of civic education for a democracy — in schools where even 
the boy of twelve " is from Missouri " and " must be 
shown." Many are the practical problems we must con- 
sider together while waiting for that penetrating light 
which sociologists will bring us one of these days. Two 
of these problems I wish to submit for consideration. As 
I see them, they can and should even now be studied by 
methods essentially experimental in nature. These prob- 
lems are: (a) The determination of the location, extent, 
and character of the defects and shortages of civic educa- 
tion as that has been directly or indirectly in recent years ; 
and (b) determination to the extent to which approved 
civic qualities of school social groups transform into ap- 
parently analogous appro vable qualities in adult life. 

5. SOCIAL GROUP DIAGNOSIS 

We agree in saying we want better civic education. 
That means that in some of our adult citizens, desirable 
civic qualities are now insufficiently or wrongly developed. 
Of what typical groups and as respects what civic qual- 
ities is this true? Having answered this question it will 
be practicable to provide that the generation still plastic 
in our hands shall be so developed, instructed, or trained, 



2 6o THE OBJECTIVES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

as far as may be, that the next generation of adult citizens 
will become more nearly what it should be. 

It is evident that, given sufficient resources of service 
and material means, we are able, even now, to proceed 
a considerable distance in ascertaining what are the defects 
or malformations of qualities essential to good citizenship 
in typical adult groups of to-day. To this end it is essen- 
tial that we should first analyze and define, qualitatively 
and quantitatively, as well as we can, important civic 
qualities in adults. Next we should disentagle certain dis- 
tinguishable groups of citizens, and elevate their posses- 
sions of these qualities. 

For example, let us take, in a given community, very 
unlike groups of citizens, each group of fairly homogene- 
ous composition, as respects race, tradition, education, 
economic condition, etc. Group M consists of small shop- 
keepers, thirty to fifty years of age, very poor, with large 
families, recent immigrants from Russia, with all that such 
a record implies of tradition, education, etc. Group N 
consists of prosperous business men of American ancestry, 
at least high-school education, small families, living in de- 
tached houses, reading best newspapers, etc. 

Typical citizens of each of these groups will vary 
greatly as to civic possibilities. As respects any particular 
civic virtue it is possible for each citizen to be excellent, 
good, fair, poor or bad. We may call the degree " excel- 
lent " the " optimum good," fair as " neutral," and bad 
as " pessimum bad." 

But if we compare, for each group of citizens, one 
virtue with another we shall find that these have different 
comparative values. It is important that a class N citizen 
keep waste off his street in front of his house, but it is 
much more important that he subscribe to government 



SOCIAL GROUP DIAGNOSIS 261 

loans to his limit in time of war. On the other hand, it 
is very important that the group M citizen keep his prem- 
ises and adjacent street clear, and it is of minor importance 
whether he subscribe his mite to a war loan. 

It is evident, therefore, that we need to analyze and 
describe the important civic virtues for each group, and 
that we give comparable ratings or measures to both the 
" optimum good " and " pessimum bad " in each case. 

Three well-informed persons, representing somewhat 
unlike points of view, might, for example, be found to 
agree that, among a thousand distinguishable civic vir- 
tues, the total being arbitrarily weighted at 10,000 units 
as the optimum for any given group of citizens, the 
following should be given the indicated standard 
positive and negative weights for class M and class N 
citizens respectively : 

(a) Keeping premises adjacent to streets in clean and 
orderly condition, class M+100 units and -200 units, class 
N+20 units and -50 units. 

(b) Right voting in municipal elections, class M+50 
units and -100 units, Class N+200 and -300 units. 

(c) Subscribing to national loans in war time, class 
M+100 units and -50 units, class N+200 units and 
-500 units. 

Any adequate rating of these civic virtues requires 
first, of course, that we translate popular and superficial 
distinctions and evaluations into reasonably accurate defi- 
nitions and measurements. What is meant, first, in each 
case by the civic virtue of keeping ones premises clean and 
orderly ? Second, as compared with all other civic virtues 
how important is this virtue in class M citizens, and in 
class N citizens? 

Having thus defined and evaluated in terms of com- 



262 THE OBJECTIVES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

parative ratings certain virtues, we could then proceed to 
rate individuals, Mi, M2, M3, etc., and Ni, N2, N3, etc. 
Proceeding thus we could determine characteristic defects 
or mal-developments in each class. 

Based on knowledge thus obtained we could proceed 
in our schools to provide that the next generation should 
be and do better. If the class " small shopkeepers " as 
described are far below desirable grade as respects clean- 
liness of premises (due presumably to defect or want of 
proper civic education) then society can proceed to reach 
in schools or otherwise those who are likely to be the 
small shopkeepers of the future. 

The children of present shopkeepers may reach right 
standards, of course, owing to the simple fact that they are 
growing up under American conditions. Their civic by- 
education from environment may prove sufficient, in 
which case the school need not exert itself. But if such is 
not the case the school has obviously a specific aim set 
for it in educating for citizenship. 

To the present writer it would seem that the procedure 
suggested above is capable of being very extensively de- 
veloped, and that such development would do much to 
advance us beyond the stage of mysticism in moral and 
civic education. It seems especially urgent that all those 
easy critics of present-day tendencies and effects should 
be set to the task of indicating in what groups, in what 
specific respects, and to what degrees good citizenship is 
now lacking. Measured in terms of their opportunities 
and influence are college professors better citizens than 
recent Jewish immigrants as respects: socially helpful 
voting; initiative in political reform; observance of traffic 
laws ; expressing helpful criticism of high executives, etc. ? 
What are the civic virtues we should expect, after proper 
education, from unmarried negroes, twenty to thirty 



THE "SPREAD" OF MORAL TRAINING 263 

years old, of such grades of ability, that they will prob- 
ably always be casual laborers? Many other lines of 
inquiry will occur to students of social education. 

6. THE " SPREAD " OF MORAL TRAINING 

It is a common assumption that social virtues devel- 
oped in the school evolve or are almost automatically trans- 
ferred into the virtues appropriate to citizens in mature 
life. We have heard much in recent years about " social- 
izing the school," " promoting games for the sake of 
teaching ' fair play/ " etc. Even superficial analysis and 
reflection will show us that in many cases we are here the 
victims of easy acceptance of general terms, of unthink- 
ing adhesion to the doctrine of formal discipline, and of 
easy reliance on the form of reasoning known to logicians 
as " post hoc ergo propter hoc." 

For example, we say we want to teach " cooperation " 
(whatever that may be) in the school. We set this up as 
a goal, doubtless, because we see a lack of right forms of 
cooperating in community and national, as well as in 
private, economic life. We cannot here stop to differen- 
tiate within those complex acts called " cooperation," the 
respective factors of instinctive sympathy, instinctive tol- 
eration, ideal of social action, perception of self-interest, 
habitual practice or attitude, etc. But it is pertinent to 
question the validity of the belief that underlying all forms 
of cooperation are certain important common elements, 
and especially common elements that can be produced by 
the educative processes fostered by schools. 

One of the most widely distributed and effective forms 
of cooperation found among adult Americans is that which 
gives the business corporation. In the schools one of the 
most widely developed forms is that found in group 
games. What are the common elements or factors in these 



264 THE OBJECTIVES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

two forms ? Does practice of the second pave the way for 
the first? If a close relationship between the second and 
the first appears, is that due to selection of naturally sym- 
pathetic or cooperating individuals or is it due to accumu- 
lated experience of training in cooperating? 

Again, one of the most important of civic virtues, we 
take for granted, is " obedience." Within the school 
group, as within all other social groups, certain kinds of 
conformity, submission of will, compliance with rules, 
restraint of impulse are essential to order and efficiency. 
By proper procedures of training and instruction we can 
procure from most individuals for the school group the 
varieties and degrees of " obedience " essential to the 
smooth discharge of the regular function of the school. 
To what extent, if at all, have we thereby established the 
practice, or even laid the foundations for the practice, of 
those varieties and degrees of " obedience " essential for 
adults in armies, in traveling the streets, in business rela- 
tions? What foundations have we laid for " obedience to 
abstract or general law," " obedience of the policemen, 
street-car conductor or head waiter," " obedience of our 
business superiors," etc. ? 

Certainly a few carefully analytical studies ought to 
help us here. What we need especially is something to 
lessen our disposition to accept aspirations instead of pro- 
grams, to discourage us from obtaining satisfaction from 
narcotizing general terms, and to disturb our faiths in the 
dogmas of formal discipline. 

Much could be done by training ourselves to speak 
somewhat in terms of concrete virtues, rather than always 
in terms of abstract or very general virtues. For example, 
if boys of thirteen to sixteen years of age have become 
habituated in the practice of tipping the hat to lady ac- 
quaintances, and if this practice has been made to rest on 
intelligent perception of the value of this convention, and 



THE "SPREAD" OF MORAL TRAINING 265 

if, finally these boys have been stimulated to ideals of 
approved conduct towards women in general — if these 
ends have been achieved, then it is probable that the social 
virtues thus established will persist throughout life. The 
same conclusion applies to such tangible virtues as: not 
throwing waste on the streets ; turning to the right ; neat- 
ness of appearance in public ; and treating horses and dogs 
with humane consideration. 

But suppose that, by proper procedures, we produce in 
boys twelve to sixteen years of age composites of concrete 
virtues which, as required in school and social groups, we 
can call obedience, patriotism, honesty, industry, coopera- 
tion and the like. Is it legitimate, in view of the very 
abstract character of these words, and the numberless 
forms of specific acts coming under them in adult life 
which bear no practical resemblance to the analogous 
school virtues, to infer from the attitudes and practices 
achieved in school life that we have provided for the cor- 
responding virtues in adult life? We wonder why some 
of the best men in private life are capable of gigantic forms 
of business dishonesty. We wonder why apparently good 
church members are bad in other social relations. A boy, 
very obedient in school, may become a very disobedient 
man in other relations. A soldier in time of peace is in- 
cessantly drilled in those forms of obedience which the 
army prizes ; but away from barracks he is so disobedient 
that hotels and theaters finally exclude all men in uniform. 

All of which should mean to us, of course, if we ap- 
proach the question in duly analytical attitudes that, for 
practical purposes, there are no such general virtues as 
obedience, loyalty, industriousness, patriotism, cleanli- 
ness, and the like, any more than, for purposes of prac- 
tical control, there are general qualities of mind that can 
be described as memory, power of observation, imagina- 
tion, attention, etc. 



266 THE OBJECTIVES OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 

As regards certain relationships, the member of a 
slum gang is exceedingly loyal ; in other relationships ex- 
ceedingly disloyal. The devoted follower of the tribal 
ethics of " boss rule" is, towards one of his groups, very 
patriotic and, toward another, the reverse. 

It is not essential, of course, that we should cease al- 
together to use these general terms, or that we should 
jump to the conclusion that " general virtues " are wholly 
illusory. But, as practical people, we must cease allowing 
ourselves to be victimized, as our shallow-thinking political 
radicals are, by the notion that a whole is like any one of 
its parts. If, when we had greatly trained the hand to 
the cunning of needlecraft, we had thereby also trained it 
for typing, for engraving, and for penmanship ; if, when 
we had trained the eye to observe endings and prefixes and 
relative locations of words in Latin, we had thereby 
trained eye and directing mind to keen powers of observa- 
tion of faces, plants, clouds, and composition of fabrics; 
if, when we had fully produced "instinctive" or other 
specific obedience to teachers' commands, we had thereby 
trained the boy and also the adult he is to be, to obey state 
laws, national laws, international laws, the justified con- 
ventions of domestic life, and the rules of good business, 
then, indeed, would the tasks of the educator be definite 
and capable of exact evaluation and performance. But 
these easy solutions exist only in the domains of super- 
ficial thinking, of lazy reasoning. They are used, com- 
monly, to camouflage the necessity for close study and 
hard work. 

Hence my contention that one of the large practical 
problems of educators to-day is, by process of close anal- 
ysis and " follow up " study, to determine in just what 
respects virtues of the school social life become virtues of 
adult social life. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE FORMATION OF MORAL CHARACTER 

Society, as it becomes more complex and develops 
higher standards of individual and social well-being, is 
always requiring more of its schools — those specialized 
educational agencies to which are progressively trans- 
ferred functions of training and instruction heretofore 
performed incidentally or informally through life itself, 
apart from the school. During the last ten years all 
progressive educators have been industriously studying 
and planning, in response to the insistently voiced demands 
of many social agencies, the development of vocational 
schools to supplement the historic forms of general or 
liberal education which had already been freely developed 
in public schools. Now that we have achieved substantial 
results in laying the foundations of public vocational 
schools, it is probable that the next great question which 
will, for many years, engage the efforts of the public, and 
of educators who can think and plan, will be that of the 
moral education which can produce in individuals the 
moral character required to meet the needs of a highly 
developed democracy in the twentieth century. 

In facing the problems of what will, for the sake of 
brevity, be here called character education, it is of the 
utmost importance that we should give especial attention 
to the following questions: (a) What are present and 
future urgent needs for better character education than 
we now get through the home, the church, and other social 
agencies than the schools? (b) What do our public 
schools now accomplish towards character education? 

267 



268 FORMATION OF MORAL CHARACTER 

(c) What are some of the possibilities of improved char- 
acter education in the schools in the near future? (d) 
What are needs of further investigation and research? 

(a) It is unnecessary here to discuss at length the 
ever-present need in a progressive democracy of new and 
advanced types of character education whereby the largest 
practicable numbers o>f individuals shall, according to their 
natural powers and probable responsibilities, be predis- 
posed and fitted, in their conforming behavior as well as 
in their self -initiated activity, to serve the ends of the 
higher social well-being. The demands of the war have 
simply made more clear what many have surmised before, 
namely, that any people who wish to preserve democracy 
of social organization, while at the same time becoming 
more socially efficient in meeting the contingencies of 
twentieth-century civilization, are confronted by prob- 
lems of character education of the most difficult kind. 

But we do not yet see as clearly as we should that these 
difficulties lie very largely in the years of advanced child- 
hood and adolescence. Up to ten or twelve years of age 
the child is, owing to his dependence, the predominance 
of his instincts of submission and conformity, and the 
relatively strong place occupied by home and parents in his 
social environment, still easily controlled by the methods 
of authority which are as old as the human race itself. 

The acute problems of character education for our 
age and conditions begin when the youth, at ten or twelve 
years of age, begins to share actively in social life out- 
side the home. Here he finds himself in the atmosphere 
of independence and free judgment produced by democ- 
racy and the scientific spirit of our time. It helps us not 
at all to say that he is not ready for this new freedom. 
The simple social fact is that such freedom exists in the 
social surroundings of at least 95 per cent, of the youth 



FORMATION OF MORAL CHARACTER 269 

of America to-day. The democracy of control and free 
diffusion of knowledge which we cherish for our adults 
have created for our children, rapidly advancing in power 
of action and in spirit of initiative, conditions under which 
the historic controls of unrationalized authority break 
down. At ten or twelve years of age the girl almost 
always, and the boy often, are still plastic and responsive 
to the controls of the only social pressures that greatly 
affect them — the home, the school, and sometimes the 
church. Within six or eight years, at most, a majority 
of the girls and almost all the boys have, during their 
active waking hours, come to live in a social environment 
which is little influenced by standards of home, church, 
or even school in the narrower academic sense. In this 
environment, in curiously mixed ways, independence of 
judgment, disregard of authority as such, and liberty of 
action, prevail and are even cherished, except within, and 
with reference to 1 , the limited social groups which, under 
the influence of instinct and custom, and sometimes strong 
leadership, constitute the central facts of social life for 
most young persons. For them these six or eight years 
usually constitute their period of initiation into self-sup- 
porting employment, power to live almost completely 
away from the home, readiness to take part in political 
movements, and the beginnings of courtship acquaintance 
with the opposite sex. In times now past, so far as democ- 
racies are concerned, these years would have been subject 
to guidance, shaping, even drastic control. They still are 
so, largely, under the customs and ideals prevalent in 
governmental and religious autocracies. But in our demo- 
cratic societies we have not created the machinery or even 
discovered the methods whereby we can effectively meet 
the new conditions which have followed in the wake of the 
evolution of personal freedom of thought and action. 



2 7 o FORMATION OF MORAL CHARACTER 

Here lie the most acute needs and the most pressing 
problems of character education. 

(b) But let us not make the mistake of undervaluing 
or misinterpreting present accomplishments of the schools 
in character education. It is probable — to the present 
writer it seems certain — that in the process of making, 
out of youth from twelve to eighteen years of age, citizens 
of the type required to carry our civilization, we shall need 
the aid of special procedures in existing schools and per- 
haps even special schools apart from these, of types as yet 
hardly more than faintly foreshadowed in the minds of 
our educators. But in a very real sense our existing 
schools do the work now expressly committed to them 
fairly well as respects both character education and also 
other forms of education. Upon the American high 
school, as an educational agency, for example, with its 
one and one-half million adolescent pupils, there are laid, 
so far as one can discover from the directions given, and 
overt acts performed, by controlling authorities, just two 
types of work and responsibility : first, to teach, in accord- 
ance with well-understood standards, certain subjects giv- 
ing knowledge and skill, such as algebra, history, chem- 
istry, typewriting, English language, civil government, 
and the like ; and, second, while doing this, to insure, by 
means of the personalities and examples of teachers, 
machinery of discipline, and some influence exerted on 
those voluntary activities of the pupils which intimately 
affect their school life and work, that the school as a little 
social world shall be itself orderly, harmonious, coopera- 
tive, refined, elevating, and, withal, democratic. Do we 
explicitly ask the school to do any more than this? 

Now is it not a fact that, in view of the demands thus 
explicitly made, and the means provided, the American 
high school is doing these tasks fairly well? As to 



FORMATION OF MORAL CHARACTER 271 

whether the first type of work — the teaching of the sub- 
jects as now oriented and defined — is worth doing in the 
serious spirit now exacted, the present writer entertains 
some serious doubts. But as to> the importance of the 
second type of work, the maintenance in the school of a 
good social life, he has no doubts whatever. 

Let American teachers, as well as the American people, 
take no small credit to themselves for the relative excel- 
lence of the social life of our schools. Year by year the 
public exacts that our teachers shall be yet more inspiring 
in their personalities, clean in their morals, refined in 
their manner, democratic in their attitudes. The old 
school vices — bullying, obscenity, destructive mischief, 
lying, cheating, brutality of teachers, servility of pupils — 
have been waning for many years. The typical primary 
school to-day is one to which children go> enthusiastically 
and unafraid and from which they come uncowed, un- 
brutalized, unroughened. The typical school of the upper 
grades carries a sad load in its enforced attendance of 
unadjusted pupils, its unvitalized curriculum, and its un- 
specialized teaching force; nevertheless, even here, the 
machinery of control and the personalities of teachers 
maintain a little society orderly enough for the work that 
can be done. The typical high school is, of course, at- 
tended only by the select of the community ; nevertheless, 
we can well wonder at the orderly and attractive social 
spirit which prevails. Co-education, sometimes a thorny 
shrub, does, in spite of all, probably bear many good 
fruits, especially for a world in which men and women 
must hereafter live and work in harness together in ways 
not familiar to earlier generations of others than manual 
workers. The modern high school has learned wisdom 
with regard to the voluntary activities of its pupils, and 
has cooperated in providing some wholesome channels 



272 FORMATION OF MORAL CHARACTER 

for their profitable development. The control of conduct 
in these schools is not undemocratic — at least there is a 
comparative absence of the arbitrary, militaristic dom- 
ination of learner by master which has been the character- 
istic oi schools serving times and peoples remote from the 
ideals of democracy. 

(c) Our schools, then, we may say in summary, are 
now reasonably effective agencies of character formation, 
so' far as that character is essential to* the social require- 
ments of the school group life itself. But is this any ade- 
quate guarantee that the men and women finally produced 
will be properly socialized for the larger responsibilities 
of life? It certainly is not. Laymen and educators alike 
are prone to fall into the error of assuming that the moral 
ideals, moral insight, or even moral habits, definitely 
formed under, and in relation to, one social situation will 
automatically and surely carry over into other different 
and remote social situations. We have to be reminded 
many times that a man may be honest in his family and 
dishonest in business; loyal to* club and disloyal to 
country ; industrious in studies and a slacker in wage-earn- 
ing employment ; courteous to his equals and discourteous 
to his inferiors; a promise-keeper to his close business 
associates and a promise-breaker in politics; a man of 
honor with his male colleagues, of dishonor with women. 

Sometimes the virtues produced in the social en- 
vironment of the school carry over into later life and 
sometimes they do not. In view of orur very imperfect 
knowledge, it is difficult in these matters to' separate aspi- 
rations and unwarranted assumptions from facts and real- 
ities. The wish of the shallow thinker is here often father 
to his thought. Superficially considered, at least, we 
should expect the standards of dress and personal tidiness 
required in high school to carry over into later life because 



FORMATION OF MORAL CHARACTER 273 

these are standards largely developed during adolescence 
in all cases. Habitual forms of behavior established be- 
tween boys and girls during the high-school period will 
probably continue operative, for the same reasons, at least 
as between social equals, for many years. On the other 
hand, it may well be doubted whether the standards of 
fair play maintained on the playground can be expected 
to carry over into adult business and politics where con- 
ditions and incitements are necessarily so different. We 
expect that the boy who has displayed (not necessarily 
been trained into) industriousness and initiative in the 
high school will continue to display these qualities in adult 
life; but the opposite expectation — that the boy lacking 
in application and industry in school will not improve or 
change when he comes under the social pressure of work- 
ing for rewards that he greatly desires — is so often nega- 
tived by experience that we can as yet draw no reli- 
able conclusions. 

The possibilities of improving the character education 
of the schools are, therefore, of two kinds. We may in 
specific respects improve upon the procedures already 
reasonably good, by which we now make the school an 
effective little social community towards the service of 
its own ends ; and we can seek to discover ways and means 
whereby we can use the school life of the pupil to pro- 
duce the qualities now most required in adult social life 
and which existing agencies fail adequately to produce. 

We are continually at work, of course, in that fitfully 
experimental spirit which characterizes conscious evolu- 
tion in education generally, on the improvement of school 
society. In spite of temporary setbacks, we are increas- 
ing the rewards of public school teaching, and therefore 
the attractiveness of the profession (if the courtesy-title 
can yet be allowed) to persons, especially unmarried 
18 



274 FORMATION OF MORAL CHARACTER 

women, of fine personality and good character. Public 
demand is steadily enforcing higher standards of social 
order in the schools — standards representing the very 
difficult resultants of humane and sympathetic govern- 
ment on the one hand with unoffending behavior on the 
other. Experiments in establishing some form of self- 
government for school or classroom, in providing more 
.abundant outlets for surplus physical energy in play and 
sports, in surrounding school life with the social sedatives 
of recreational reading and play, in providing through 
practical arts studies for the orderly expression of work- 
manship instincts, in forming parents into conferences 
whereby home and school control can be made mutually 
to reinforce each other — all these, and scores of other old 
processes being improved or new ones being invented 
represent, in their composite form, movements of much 
magnitude looking to the conscious progressive evolution 
of the school, as a society functioning for the provision 
of the instruction and training which is the primary pur- 
pose of its existence. 

What can the public school do — in any of its grades or 
types — as conscious character education towards the re- 
quirements of the adult society which yet lie far ahead? 
Let us frankly admit that here we are, if we consider the 
matter scientifically at all, still in a dark continent. There 
is no> dearth, in this continent, of the blind alleys of super- 
stition, dogma, and easy generalization. The literature 
of moral education as it is usually called, is overwhelm- 
ingly charged with half-baked mysticism and metaphysical 
speculation. It is doubtful if easy moralizers, theological 
or other, are destined to give us much safe guidance in our 
explorations in this field during the next few years. We 
have much to hope from those whose happy union of opti- 
mistic idealism for human society, as it might be, with a 



FORMATION OF MORAL CHARACTER 275 

disposition to face social realities frankly as they are, 
enable them successfully to promote profitable experi- 
ments and sane programs of constructive action. From 
our sociologists, too, and especially those delving deep in 
social psychology, we have probably much to expect. 

For the purposes of a character education that shall 
function specifically in good adult citizenship, it is not 
certain, as intimated above, that we have much more to 
expect from schools for younger children, pious opinion 
to the contrary notwithstanding. Certainly, our more 
promising opportunities are in schools dealing with youth 
from twelve years of age upwards. Here have already 
been begun some promising developments. Within mod- 
erate limits, we believe now that given a mastery of means 
and methods yet to be worked out, we can enable the 
youth to obtain some intellectual apprehension of the 
structure and functions of the community social life in 
which, a few years hence, he must play his part. By 
means of social science studies yet to be developed and 
probably by studies of history pedagogically organized in 
ways as yet only beginning to be understood, we can give 
the prospective citizen really vital appreciations (not to 
be mistaken for habits, knowledge, or ideals, but perhaps 
involved in the making of these) of the complexity of the 
social machinery of which he is a part, and of the import- 
ance of his playing a worthy role therein. In this transi- 
tion adolescent age, we realize more, perhaps, than did 
our forebears, the importance of those ideals which, 
deeply felt and concretely perceived, have the ef- 
fect often of becoming the incitements of definite 
and persisting motives. We do not yet know how 
to produce these ideals as a steady crop; but, having 
in mind the tremendous influence of rare personalities, of 
certain types of vital literature and other art, and of new 



276 FORMATION OF MORAL CHARACTER 

social groupings like the Boy Scouts and boys' clubs, as 
these agencies, like variable stars, shine brightly for short 
seasons, we are slowly developing the conviction that there 
are yet to be discovered pedagogic ways and means 
whereby, over long eras and on a large scale, we can 
realize the valuable results for which we are now indebted 
to volunteer and, almost of necessity, more or less 
sporadic effort. 

The immediate future seems full of pedagogic promise 
here, partly because we are seeing the possibilities in- 
volved. We suspect that the moving picture has intro- 
duced into the lives of our adolescents formative influences 
of great moment for good or evil towards the standards 
of adult social behavior. If we but open our eyes, we can 
ascertain the large part played by the fiction which is, in 
vast quantities, trivial or substantial, uplifting or debas- 
ing, purveyed by newsstand and public library. In fra- 
ternity and club our sons and daughters of greatest 
natural promise form little societies of such solidity that 
a kind of socialization takes place almost too rapidly, and 
sometimes with the effect of producing arrest of what 
would otherwise be promising social development towards 
usefulness in the larger societies of the world. Teachers 
are looking with admiration on scouting as a means of 
assisting adolescents normally to be inducted into the 
standards of ideal and act which are approved by virile 
men, especially on the plane of the elemental social life 
where the adult of necessity plays a strong and visible part 
in wholesome small-group life. Some educators, forced 
by circumstances now easily understood, to consider the 
possibilities, on the one hand, of military training in our 
public schools, and, on the other, of a period of com- 
pulsory army training in young manhood, have easily 
risen to the conception of an enriched period of com- 



FORMATION OF MORAL CHARACTER 277 

pulsory service in a variety of the functions of good 
citizenship, rather than in armed defense alone. 

From these and many other sources, we educators are 
slowly building up a body of convictions, resolves and 
partial insights, which will yet serve as the fertile soil out 
of which workable and effective programs shall spring. 
We are beginning to see our present high-school curricu- 
lums in their true light — as withered and almost un- 
serviceable survivals of ancient practices and mistaken 
conceptions of educational means. We have ceased to have 
faith in the traditional organization of our schools for 
children from twelve to fourteen years of age; and as 
we proceed to put into effect reorganizations already 
planned here, we shall undoubtedly open the way for the 
beginnings of some really vital character education 
towards the ends of adult life. A thousand signs in the 
field of adolescent education point the way to new analyses 
of educational goals, to new developments of means 
and methods, and to new achievements of results on 
a plane much higher than that on which we have 
heretofore worked. 

(d) Progress in education in the past has come as the 
result of a slow trial-and-error process, varied occasionally 
by the minor revolutions wrought by ,the dynamic powers 
of some creative thinker or exceptionally forceful execu- 
tive. Of progress due to scientific inquiry, carefully 
planned experimentation, or the execution of deliberately 
matured programs, education has almost none to show as 
yet. For this condition of affairs we need not necessarily 
reproach ourselves. It is only within the last couple of 
centuries that engineering, medicine, war, and agricul- 
ture have been, even in part, lifted from the planes of 
tradition and faith varied by half-conscious evolutions 
due to the slow accretions of changes resulting from trial- 



278 FORMATION OF MORAL CHARACTER 

and-error processes. But education deals with forces 
and conditions so obscure that even the essential under- 
lying sciences — psychology and sociology — are still in a 
state of very imperfect development compared with the 
sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and biology, that are 
essential in engineering, medicine, war, and agriculture. 

Nevertheless, every forward-looking educator eagerly 
anticipates the day when educational aims and processes 
can be systematically improved and advanced by methods 
that can properly be called scientific. He foresees the 
time when new problems can be so defined and stated that 
systematic study of their various elements will be possible ; 
when reasonably exact descriptions of purposes, pro- 
cedures, and findings in the investigation of these problems 
can be documented and communicated because of the 
existence in education of a fairly definite and compre- 
hensive technical terminology; when, succeeding to the 
tentative solution of problems, systematically carried out, 
and when, once the worth and practicability of new ob- 
jectives and methods shall have been demonstrated, appli- 
cations of these valuable results to practice in general can 
be discriminatingly made and with some assurance as 
to final outcomes. 

We are at present hardly within sight, in any con- 
crete and comprehensive sense, of the vision of a system 
of education being consciously and scientifically im- 
proved. But we have come to the stage of promising 
beginnings. Where some of the adjuncts of education are 
concerned — lighting and ventilation of classrooms, cost 
accounting, and the like — recent developments have been 
in a measure along scientific lines. The effectiveness of 
different methods of training or instruction in the more 
formal of primary-school studies, as well as objectives 
in at least two-— spelling and arithmetic — have recently 



FORMATION OF MORAL CHARACTER 279 

been subjected to tests conceived in scientific spirit and so 
executed as to give large promise of valuable results in 
practice in the near future. Contemporary efforts to sup- 
plement existing public schools of general education by 
others designed to offer to the rank and file of workers 
certain specific forms of vocational education have been 
made at least partially effective by inquiries of a reason- 
ably scientific character. 

Towards furthering the extensions and readjustments 
of education for the formation of moral character, as 
discussed in this chapter, are there practicable scientific in- 
quiries, well-sustained experiments, systematic applica- 
tions on a generous scale of objectives and methods of 
already demonstrated worth? Must the further develop- 
ment of programs in this field await the outcome of 
endless exchanges of half-metaphysical dialectic, and the 
blind fumblings of innovators driven by force of external 
conditions or lured by a faint inner light? Surely, in 
these days when social consciousness in individuals, and 
even in many groups, is so wideawake, we can hope for 
something better. The National Education Association 
has not ignored its responsibilities and its opportunities 
in this field heretofore ; but assuredly its duty is far from 
being done as yet. 

Under the auspices of the National Education Asso- 
ciation, as well as of other educational organizations, can 
be formed committees created especially for the discovery, 
analysis, and documentary statement of specific prob- 
lems of character education which lie ahead of us. Is 
it not true that there now exists almost a dearth of such 
work in any scientific sense? 

The members of all teachers' organizations can do 
much to cooperate, by moral encouragement and by dis- 
criminating study of findings, with the endowed and other 



2 8o FORMATION OF MORAL CHARACTER 

voluntary agencies now working on the problems involved. 
In time, if not now, certain of the results of the work of 
these organizations will have reached the point where their 
definite application in school programs will be safe and 
desirable. In such work the cooperative efforts of thou- 
sands of educators is to be expected. 

From time to time, due to the generosity of philan- 
thropist or enterprise of administrator, experimental work 
on a large scale will be possible. Educators appreciative 
of scientific method can encourage such experimentation 
and quietly urge that it be planned and conducted in 
accordance with scientific method. They can give such 
experiments time to produce some definite results instead 
of indulging sometimes in hasty criticism and rejection, 
and sometimes in equally hasty adulation and acceptance. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE SOCIAL OBJECTIVES OF VOCATIONAL 

EDUCATION 

All adults, practically, must work to support them- 
selves and those dependents for whom they are respon- 
sible. Hence aH adults during all historic times have 
had vocations — hunting, fishing, fighting, mining, teach- 
ing, leading, farming, writing. Since man has only very 
meagerly developed instincts for systematized productive 
work, it follows that all competent adult workers have 
somehow or other been " educated " for the pursuit of 
their vocations. 

Observation of men and women workers easily shows 
us the prevalence in society, now as well as in the past, 
of three distinct varieties of education, specifically directed 
toward producing vocational proficiency. A small pro- 
portion — and these usually of the higher ranks — of the 
workers among us were in large part instructed and 
trained for their work in vocational schools, that is, 
agencies whose primary purpose was to give that voca- 
tional education. Perhaps 5 per cent, of the 60,000,000 
adult workers in the United States to-day — farmers, 
miners, factory operatives, clerks, housewives, profes- 
sional men, and the rest — were trained in schools of medi- 
cine, law, pharmacy, engineering, stenography, nursing, 
elementary-school teaching, military leadership, and 
the like. 

Another small number, perhaps 6 per cent, of the 
total, were trained under the conditions of systematized 
and responsible apprenticeship. Here belong large pro- 

281 



282 OBJECTIVES OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

portions of plumbers, printers, stone-cutters, and loco- 
motive engineers; and variable proportions of carpenters, 
machinists, silversmiths, hatmakers and jewelers. 

But nearly 90 per cent, of all the adult workers of 
America to-day have been the beneficiaries — and the vic- 
tims — only of what may quite accurately be called " pick- 
up " vocational education. Nearly all of our factory 
operatives, miners, farmers, housewives, business men, 
high-school teachers, sailors, and transport workers began 
their vocational life somewhere between the ages of twelve 
and twenty as helpers, job workers, and navvies. They 
blundered along the trial-and^error roads of experience, 
sometimes stung by the sarcasm of foreman, sometimes 
helped by the kindly suggestion and " showing " of 
fellow-worker. 

It is in the social situation here outlined that we must 
get accurate bearings if we are intelligently to discuss 
vocational education. It is abundantly capable of demon- 
stration that " pick-up " vocational education is fright- 
fully wasteful of the time, vitality, moral energy, and 
potential powers of the individual. As a means to general 
social efficiency it is comparable only with the possibilities 
of " pick-up " military education in modern war. 
* Some would seek to restore and to extend apprentice- 
ship vocational education; but, for our day and genera- 
tion, it would be as well to talk of fighting wars with bows 
and spears. Apprenticeship, buttressed by numberless 
laws and ancient customs was, indeed, once a very general 
means of inducting young workers into the vocational 
" mysteries " and skills possessed by elder workers. But 
it has been the method chiefly of handicraft industries, 
and conspicuously of those which, patterning after pro- 
duction in the family unit, organized naturally on the 
basis of "man and helper," or fully skilled and partly 



OBJECTIVES OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 283 

skilled, working in pairs, or at most in trios and quartets. 
Apprenticeship works imperfectly, however, as between 
father and son, or mother and daughter ; it requires more 
formal relationship. But it fades and dies under factory 
conditions. It is starved by specialization of production. 
It degenerates even in the handicraft industries when 
mobility of labor becomes prevalent and the binding force 
of indenture is impaired. In rare instances it reemerges 
in modern production, as in the case of engine firing and 
driving, where the necessary pairing of workers, to whom 
are assigned very different responsibilities, gives naturally 
to the inferior the desire and possibilities of eventual pro- 
motion, and to the friendly superior the pleasure of teach- 
ing and advancing his assistant. But apprenticeship as 
a general means of vocational education holds little prom- 
ise to the student of modern economic conditions. 

It is necessary that we clearly recognize in the contem- 
porary movement for vocational education a half -blind 
and half -articulate social effort to substitute sys- 
tematic vocational education for primitive and inferior 
types — that is, to replace by the direct and purposive 
process of the vocational school the chaotic and hazardous 
processes of " pick-up'' methods, and to find substitutes 
for apprenticeship where that is manifestly archaic and 
unserviceable. The contemporary movement reflects fun- 
damentally a variety of aspirations, not for vocational 
education in the broadest sense, but for more efficient and 
less wasteful, more purposeful and less hit-and-miss, 
kinds than have heretofore prevailed. These aspirations 
are readily recognized by the social economist as being 
one of the necessary products of the enlarged and human- 
ized social ideals and insights which have so markedly 
characterized the social evolution of the first years of 
the twentieth century. 



284 OBJECTIVES OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

But the full significance of contemporary social de- 
mands and experiments, the goal of which is a general 
system of public-school vocational education, has been 
seriously misunderstood by many citizens and educators 
and not a few well-known writers and publicists. Certain 
large questions seem constantly to recur in the writings 
and addresses of men who, it would seem, should long 
ere this have become better informed. Their attitudes of 
doubt and opposition can be expressed in a few funda- 
mental questions. Is school vocational education some- 
thing markedly distinctive from other kinds of school 
education? Is vocational education in schools generally 
practicable? Is it "democratic"? Does it contribute 
to undemocratic industrialism? Should it be supported 
at public expense ? 

I. THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

Excessive reliance on the illusory supports of a now 
discarded faculty psychology and upon the easy general- 
izations of certain kinds of educational philosophy has 
been responsible, during the last half -century, for a variety 
of persistent refusals on the part of many educators and 
others adequately to conceive education in its analytic, 
and therefore practical, aspects. The result has been a 
very considerable mysticism in educational thinking and 
a deplorable vagueness in much of current discussion. 
Terminologies have been uncertain and equivocal. Beau- 
tiful, even if futile, aspirations have mingled with what 
has at times seemed deliberate obscurantism. Number- 
less pages and hours have been devoted to half-metaphysi- 
cal speculation and dogmatizing about the aim of educa- 
tion. The struggle for unitary conceptions has obscured 
the essentially composite character of the ends or ob- 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 285 

jectives which educational procedure must necessarily set 
before itself. Educational writers have too frequently 
seemed to be in quest of a panacea or philosopher's stone — 
some simple aim with its attendant method which would 
serve all the educational needs of an endlessly varied and 
complex society. 

Now, of course, simple, all-inclusive formulas have 
little practical place in education, any more than they have 
in medicine, engineering, or government. The actual 
guiding aims of educational procedure must be no less 
varied than the varieties of goods — under such inclusive 
categories as security, health, wealth, knowledge, beauty, 
sociability, perpetuation of, species, and communion with 
God — which stimulate and control men's efforts in this 
world. It is true that from time to time we need to agree 
upon working hypotheses as to what is desired as to the 
total make-up of the finished product of multifarious edu- 
cational procedures. We need these hypotheses as a 
means of determining the relative weights to be assigned 
to various types of educational objective. But it seems 
to the present writer largely futile effort to try to derive 
these hypotheses of ultimate aim or composite objective 
from a priori sources. They will have to be derived 
inductively, at least until such time as sociology can give 
us working evaluations of various optimum qualities and 
types of desirable social membership. 

For example, if we study the assemblage of qualities 
exhibited by some adult of perhaps forty years of age 
whom several of us approve as a " good all-round " man, 
we shall find him to embody many classes and specific 
varieties of qualities that can readily be grouped as lit- 
eracy, health, vocational proficiency, sociability, moral 
character, military prowess, intellectual culture, aesthetic 



286 OBJECTIVES OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

appreciation, and the like. Each and any one of these may 
be made the determining objective of a specific variety 
of education for the youth of to-day. There is no educa- 
tional " simple " or panacea which will produce them all. 
Naturally, group or social or public effort is, at any given 
time, devoted chiefly to insuring the high development of 
those qualities then deemed chiefly valuable to the groups — 
at one time those found in the strong warrior, at another 
those of the priest, and still another those of the well- 
disposed and well-informed citizen. In fact, it can be 
accepted as a general social principle that the collective 
action of public support and control is directed, at any 
given time, primarily toward producing those qualities 
and, more commonly, special degrees of excellence of 
qualities, which society is believed greatly to need, and 
toward producing which nature, together with private or 
individual agencies, is manifestly unequal. Any given 
degree of education effected through the specialized 
agency to which the generic term " school " can be applied 
is manifestly more expensive than the " natural develop- 
ment " forced or induced by the environment, or the " by- 
education " of home, shop, or playground ; but these latter 
agencies are often not equal to the task of producing the 
degrees and distributions of the qualities desired by 
society. Hence, in the last analysis, the institution known 
as " school " — whether for letters or war, for vocation 
or spiritual nurture, for physical training or citizenship — 
is charged with the responsibility of achieving certain 
ends valuable primarily to the individual or to society 
which other less expensive agencies cannot meet. 

Now the objectives of vocational education are not 
less, but rather more, distinctive than those of any other 
particular area of cultural, civic, moral, or physical life. 
The distinctive procedures which, applied to two men 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 287 

otherwise equal as respects native endowment, health, cul- 
ture, and moral character, give us in the one case the 
competent dentist and in the other the equally competent 
bookkeeper, bear resemblance neither to each other nor 
to the procedures by which ability to read, knowledge 
of the laws of health, or interests in good literature have 
been produced. 

Certain well-known writers oppose provision of 
schools for vocational education because of the resulting 
" dualism " of educational purposes. They seem to fail 
to realize that even non-vocational school education is 
already a " pluralism " of purposes, and not infrequently 
a highly involved pluralism at that. Training in singing 
and instruction in Latin have certainly little in common 
as to either aim or method. The Japanese youth spends 
part of his time learning swordsmanship and part master- 
ing the classics; is this not " dualistic" education, if we 
take note of practical results? Handwriting and the 
multiplication table, as taught to children, function in 
various basic ways : but what are the actual functions of 
music, folk-dancing, and drawing? What is the evidence 
outside of mystic belief that their results are useful 
to society ? 

But when we view the results of all kinds of education 
synthetically in the " composite efficiency " of the man we 
approve, we easily discern the important place of the voca- 
tional powers. Like the foundation walls of a building, 
they may not be pretty to look at ; but on their strength 
and durability the' possibilities of the superstructure of 
culture, moral character, and health largely depend. These 
foundation walls cannot well be built of the same materials 
or by the same methods as can roofs, floors, and the dec- 
orations of porch and parlor. The objectives of voca- 
tional education cannot be realized by the same procedures, 



288 OBJECTIVES OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

or by procedures at all similar, to those which give us 
love of good literature, reading knowledge of French, or 
enthusiastic appreciation of nature. 

2. THE PRACTICABILITY OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 
THROUGH SCHOOLS 

If it could be shown that vocational education through 
schools is impracticable for a large proportion of voca- 
tions, then, certainly, time would be largely wasted in 
discussing its inclusion in schemes of education for democ- 
racies. But of course that is not the case. It is not 
possible to point to a single vocation of the more than 
two thousand now followed by American men and women 
for which direct and positive vocational education is not 
theoretically practicable, given the necessary working 
means and conditions. Unfortunately many educators 
can only think of " schools " in terms of classrooms, text- 
books, and other academic paraphernalia. Notwithstand- 
ing the numerous examples of very effective schools from 
the days of Darius and Pericles onward, in which were 
no blackboards or books, classes or recitations, these edu- 
cators (to which must be added many laymen) persist in 
thinking and speaking of " the school " and especially of 
" the public school " as of substantially one type and 
method and hence, by inference, one purpose. 

The difficulties due here to limitations of imagination 
can, however, be speedily overcome when once social 
economists and educators resolutely address themselves 
to study of specific objectives. Would it be practicable 
to have a school designed primarily to train men of 
suitable age to be sailors and deep-sea fishermen ? Where 
should such a " school " be located? What would be its 
primary equipment? its chief procedures? By similarly 
facing the practical problems of providing schools de- 



IS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION DEMOCRATIC? 289 

signed to produce, respectively, competent barbers, shoe- 
factory operatives, coal miners, traveling salesmen for 
automobiles, cotton growers, and the like, it is easy to 
pass beyond the barriers set by academic tradition 
and inertia. 

3. IS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION DEMOCRATIC? 

In America, no less than in France and some of the 
smaller countries, we write and talk endlessly about 
democracy and about education toward or for de- 
mocracy. But of clear-cut sociological analysis and 
definition of the aspirations, ideals, and provisional pro- 
grams embraced under those terms we have all too few. 
Discussion of education for democracy or of democracy 
in education remains vague, indeterminate, and unpro- 
ductive if not based upon some clearly indicated assump- 
tions as to first principles and terminology. 

It is evident that for practical purposes we must con- 
sider democracy under several species. The working 
aspirations, ideals, and proposals of political democracy 
have become fairly familiar to Americans during the last 
two 1 centuries. We have also recognized, although we are 
far from having always approved, certain tendencies 
toward free intermarriage, free cultural and sociability 
association, and free allowance of common sumptuary 
standards that may for the present be called social democ- 
racy. Religious democracy and democracy of worship we 
can at least understand. Recently we have heard much of 
aspirations for industrial democracy; but whether these 
are based upon wholly illusory interpretations of natural 
process and human psychology or really foreshadow new 
possibilities of human achievement, none of us can, ex- 
cept in moments when faith rides supreme over reason, 
feel as yet quite certain. 
19 



2 9 o OBJECTIVES OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

The philosopher cannot, of course, be very patient of 
these attempts thus to consider democracy analytically. 
He visions in men and in societies ideal tendencies to give 
to each individual, however limited in natural powers or 
earth-born opportunities, the maximum of freedom, de- 
velopment, and self-realization possible. He grudgingly 
recognizes limitations imposed by heredity and natural 
environment; and he flounders often between his aspira- 
tions that the individual shall be a willing and perpetually 
altruistic member of all kinds of social groups, including 
the state, and his conviction that the ever-active disposi- 
tion of the group (and especially of the naturally strongest 
in it) is unduly to control, repress, frustrate, and eventu- 
ally crush, the individual. Hence, while his interests 
center largely in those conditions which make for freedom 
and expansion of the individual nature, he very commonly 
fails to take due account of those limiting factors which 
must be primary concerns of the sociologist. 

The sociologist cannot, during current decades, escape 
the necessity of considering public education as both 
product and causative means of the current prolonged and 
massive movement for political democracy which, of 
course, finds its most familiar final manifestations in those 
social groupings which function as the state. Some of the 
practical aspirations of this political democracy are now 
clearly recognized. Its best exponents seek, not the 
equality of all individuals in general — that would be 
Utopian — but equality in the exercise and enjoyment of 
those obligations, rights, and privileges which the state, 
through collective political action, creates and controls. 
Hence equality of all before the law; equality of oppor- 
tunity in choosing those who shall make, interpret, and 
execute the laws (voting for public servants) ; equality of 
opportunity to approve or disapprove proposals of public 



IS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION DEMOCRATIC? 291 

policy (voting again) ; equality of obligations to bear the 
burdens of taxation and uncompensated public service; 
and equality of right to share in those opportunities for 
growth and satisfaction which politically collective action 
provides — roads, parks, schools, etc. — these have for sev- 
eral centuries past been the actual and practicable objec- 
tives, the world over, of political democracy. It would 
be easy to enumerate many ancillary phases of these — 
freedom of thought, of speech, of publication, of work, 
of trade, and of migration — which represent either reac- 
tions against previous suppressions of democratic free- 
dom or else conditions for the attainment of the major 
objectives. The Prince of Wales says to 1 America : " Your 
aims are as democratic as ours." We are inquisitive to 
know whether mentally he italicized the word " aims." 

Now aspirations for democratic education are, like 
most other aspirations, very old ; but it was not until the 
nineteenth century that public opinion forced the wide- 
spread development in America, France, Scotland, and 
other countries, of extensive programs of publicly sup- 
ported and publicly controlled education. The motives 
underlying this movement were mixed. The good of the 
state — a safe electorate, literate soldiers, citizens predis- 
posed against crime and vice — was often a controlling 
ideal. The logical fruition of this ideal is found in Prussia 
and Japan. But, hardly less frequently, the good of the 
individual — his religious salvation, his ability to earn a 
living, his satisfaction of desires for knowledge, his enjoy- 
ment of leisure, removal of barriers to office-holding and 
association with the " educated " — has been the dominant 
motive. Theoretically, the two tendencies here indicated 
pull somewhat away from each other, if indeed they do 
not operate in opposite directions; but, practically, they 
lead to policies and practices which are the social resultant 



2 9 2 OBJECTIVES OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

that at any one time probably represent the best that a 
groping people can do for itself. 

By the opening of the twentieth century the United 
States had brought to relatively full fruition our social 
ideals of democratic education as then understood. Ele- 
mentary schools had become universal and free, accessible 
and publicly controlled. Secondary schools of supposedly 
general education had also become free and reasonably 
accessible. In the newer states, colleges supported largely 
by public taxation had become available at small cost to 
the individual. 

Contrasted with schools which had preceded them 
here or abroad, all of these lower and higher agencies of 
learning were, indeed, democratic ; but evaluated in terms 
of the ideals of democracy, they yet fell far short. In 
spite, often, of good intentions to* the contrary, their 
social opportunities were often bestowed according to the 
natural law of primitive and relatively uncooperative life, 
" To them that hath shall be given ; and from them that 
hath not shall be taken away even that which they have." 
Some kinds of class or caste stratification these schools 
have indeed tended to reduce ; but none the less they have 
tended to accentuate certain kinds of aristocracy (in the 
more original meaning of the term), namely, the aristoc- 
racies derived from native abilities and favoring economic 
environment. To the extent which the social principle of 
" strengthening the strong " and helping chiefly the " most 
helpable " has induced our ablest to " take on " as much 
" liberal education " as practicable, it is unlikely that our 
practices have been seriously amiss ; but to the extent that, 
under the sway of this ideal, we have interpreted " educa- 
tion " as essentially and only those forms of civic and 
cultural education (plus the great illusion of mental disci- 
pline) which collectively make what can properly be called 



IS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION DEMOCRATIC? 293 

liberal education, then indeed are we taking from the 
partially disinherited "even that which they have." Amer- 
ican youth of less than average abilities and favoring home 
environment may, on reaching the years of life from the 
fourteenth to the twentieth, ask for the bread of further 
educational opportunity; but, with the only rarest of 
exceptions, they ask in vain. We have nothing but what 
is for them the stones of college-preparatory subjects in 
our high schools and the patent-medicine offerings of 
commercial courses. 

The fundamental source of our social confusion here 
has been, of course, our refusal to recognize that, for the 
large majority of our people, when once the years of 
childhood have been passed and the transition to man- 
hood and womanhood begins, education for vocation 
becomes a matter of paramount importance. It is cer- 
tainly such to the individual; and the Great War has 
assisted us to see that it is also such to the state. Indeed, 
men of academic prepossessions have themselves long seen 
the light where the aristocratic vocations have been con- 
cerned (called " vocations of leadership " as a palliative 
to the stirrings of the academic conscience). That able 
and select youth who could triumphantly finish a four 
years' general course in academy or high school has for 
generations found open to him at little cost, and often 
with the inducement of scholarship grants, vocational 
schools of theology, law, medicine, engineering, teaching, 
navigation, war leadership, agricultural direction, phar- 
macy, dentistry, and accountancy. But to the sons and 
daughters of the poor and most conspicuously to the 
meagerly endowed of these, upon whom economic neces^ 
sides for at least self-support began to bear heavily at 
fifteen or sixteen years of age, no corresponding oppor- 
tunities for purposive vocational education have been 



294 OBJECTIVES OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

available. For a pitiful few philanthropy has made some 
slight provision ; and state schools have been provided for 
a few thousands who would first qualify through the 
commitment of felony of sufficient gravity to justify com- 
mitment to a reform school. To a few more have been 
cast the crusts of technical courses in evening, or vaguely 
oriented day, schools. 

In other words, from the standpoint of any adequate 
conception of the various possible and desirable social 
aims of education, even our most generously planned 
schemes have thus far been shamefully undemocratic. 
They have taxed the weak for the benefit of ,the strong ; 
they have in many cases helped to the building of new and 
highly individualistic aristocracies; and they have oper- 
ated, by various covert influences, to degrade rather than 
to elevate the self-confidence and working energies of all 
those to whom nature and social environment have been 
niggardly of gifts. 

These tendencies away from, rather than toward, truly 
democratic education, have, of course, been in large part 
inevitable in processes of social evolution as new as those 
with which we are here concerned. Certainly no blame 
for existing limitations of ideal or practice need be directed 
against those leaders who have not had responsibility or 
opportunity for the analytical and comprehensive study of 
educational objectives. But what shall be said of those 
leaders whose chief business in life is the study of educa- 
tion? What, especially, should be said of those who, in 
the name of democracy of education and of education for 
democracy, have recently been opposing the development 
of effective schemes for vocational education? 

Fortunately, it can be said of most of them that their 
hearts are right, however wrong their heads. Of these 
opponents there are several distinguishable groups. Some 



IS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION DEMOCRATIC? 295 

think that the varieties and degrees of general school 
education now provided contribute as much as a public- 
school system practicably can toward vocational pro- 
ficiency. Their contentions have already been answered 
in this chapter. Another group includes certain able social 
idealists whose antipathies to the present " industrial sys- 
tem " cause them to view with aversion all educational 
proposals which seem to give that system recognition and 
perhaps tentative approval. A third group, including 
many leaders from among the present administrative 
staffs of existing public schools, concede, in somewhat 
vague terms, the importance of vocational objectives in 
public education, but oppose the provision of necessary 
means, if that involves separate or specialized vocational 
schools. Let us consider first the positions held by this 
last group. 

Their theory of educational objectives is best ex- 
pressed in the Report on Cardinal Principles of Second- 
ary Education prepared by the National Education 
Association's Commission on the Reorganization of Sec- 
ondary Education. The most important means of insuring 
democracy of education is that public schools for young 
people from twelve to eighteen years of age should not 
be differentiated or separately organized according to the 
probable economic future of different groups of learners 
— so one infers from study of the report. Nevertheless, 
preparation for vocational competency should rank as one 
of the principal aims of secondary education. The means 
of all secondary education should be the " comprehensive 
high school " — the " people's university " (this is not the 
language but it is clearly the ideal of the report) to which 
should come for all schooling of less than college grade 
the rich and the poor, the well-endowed and the poorly- 
endowed, the representatives of all groups otherwise made 



29 6 OBJECTIVES OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

potentially discordant by conditions and traditions of race, 
religion, economic status, and political inheritance. Daily 
association, commingling, and cooperation in this com- 
prehensive high school is to insure in adolescents such 
mutual understanding, toleration, and civic cooperation 
as^will largely prevent social cleavages and class conflicts 
thereafter. Thus is American society to be democratized. 

With the educational ideals here implied surely no 
good American can quarrel, and least of all the man 
schooled in contemporary sociology. It is only when we 
come to sonsider the practicability of these ideals that men 
accustomed to think in terms of realities must hesitate and 
finally pause. The literature of education is replete with 
ideals that are essentially Utopian. They are in fact little 
more than the aspirations of men who feel deeply but 
whose disposition or circumstances preclude thinking in 
terms of realistic conditions and possibilities. 

It is submitted that critical examination of the Car- 
dinal Principles will prove that such is the case with the 
educators who framed it. Their vision is admirable, and 
it is socially sound as regards non-vocational or liberal 
education. In American society it is of the utmost im- 
portance that as long as our young people are required, 
or can be induced, to remain in schools of non-vocational 
education — up to> the age of fourteen for all, of sixteen 
for many, of eighteen for a favored minority, and of 
twenty for a few elect — there should be the least possible 
differentiation or segregation on account of race, creed, 
probable economic future, or any other circumstance not 
strictly relevant to the development of common cul- 
ture, common standards of good citizenship, and 
common health fulness. 

But the mistake of the Commission lies in the non- 
critical assumption that a similar unification of aims is 



IS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION DEMOCRATIC? 297 

practicable on behalf of those seeking vocational educa- 
tion. We must all sincerely wish that it were practicable, 
especially in these days when economic cleavages threaten 
to divide men into warring groups, as have formerly 
racial, religious, and political differences. But those of 
us who have tried to interpret vocational education in 
terms of objectives corresponding to the realities of mod- 
ern economic life must sadly confess that vocational edu- 
cation in the " comprehensive high school " is in the main 
a product of the imagination. We are forced to recognize 
that in the modern city of even a few thousand inhabitants 
scores, if not hundreds, of vocations are represented; 
that the " ages of effective entry " upon them ranges from 
fifteen to thirty ; that in the large majority effective voca- 
tional education must consist primarily in that sustained 
and concentrated " training " which is practicable only on 
realistic work of a definitely productive character; and 
that the proper place for such training is only in closest 
possible conjunction with the commercial agencies which 
are themselves engaged locally in supplying productive 
service, or the products of productive service, to 
the community. 

There are a few vocations which can, perhaps, be 
taught amidst the academic environs of a high school 
located in the residence district of a city. Possiibly book- 
keeping, stenography, draughtsmanship, are typical of 
these. A few others, of which house carpentry and home- 
making may be types, are of such a character that technical 
studies and direction of practical work could be organized 
in the high school while facilities for educative productive 
work could be found in the vicinity. 

But what about the vocations of sailor, fireman, com- 
mission-house clerk, hardware salesman, shoe-factory 
operative, hotel waitress, barber, street-car motorman, 



2 9 8 OBJECTIVES OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

farm laborer, concrete worker, silversmith, machinist, 
foundryman, and traveling" salesman for woolen goods? 
Either the Commission denies, by implication, that there 
exists any social need that vocational preparation for these 
vocations should be given in schools under public support, 
or else it has not critically examined the conditions under 
which such education of an effective nature is practicable. 
There prevails, in fact, a fundamental error in regard 
to the necessary determining conditions of vocational edu- 
cation which is by no means confined to men of academic 
prepossessions. It consists in regarding vocational edu- 
cation as in some mystic way practicable of achievement 
through minor modifications of courses and methods in 
existing schools, whether elementary, high, or collegiate, 
or of slightly differentiated extensions upward of their 
essential procedures, instead of being, as it actually must 
be, rather an extension downward, for educational pur- 
poses, of the objectives and conditions of productive work 
itself. The history of vocational education shows clearly 
that in modern times hardly any form of school vocational 
education has escaped the fate of passing through a long 
period, sometimes of many decades, during which its 
principal aims and processes have been essentially bookish, 
academic, impractical, and vocationally non-functional or, 
at best, only partially functional. Such has certainly 
been the history of schools of medicine, agricultural and 
military leadership, and the training of teachers ; and such 
is still, probably, the case with schools of engineering, 
" business," and home-making. Apart from schools de- 
signed to> extend or supplement apprenticeship, of which 
European countries furnish the principal examples, the 
only type of modern vocational education now known to 
the writer which has not suffered a long enslavement to 
academic tradition is that developed since 1850 for the 



IS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION DEMOCRATIC? 299 

training of nurses. Here conditions rather than any 
clearly conceived purpose imposed reasonably sound peda- 
gogic standards from the outset ; in fact, programs leaned 
so far to the practical as to require, like apprenticeship, 
social safeguarding to save the learner from exploitation. 

The obvious conclusion is that, as regards that democ- 
racy of education which consists in the free association of 
learners during working hours, the possibilities are obvi- 
ously large during the years given to general or liberal 
education, and small under the conditions of sound voca- 
tional education. Vocational education, in the very nature 
of the case, involves much the same kinds of segregation 
as the exercise of the vocations themselves. Even where 
several types of higher vocational schools are brought 
together, as in a university, there exists little intermin- 
gling of students except out of working hours. The de- 
mands of the medical school claim the working hours 
of its students no less than do those of the college of elec- 
trical engineering. Even if we should place within one 
group of juxtaposed buildings vocational schools of shoe- 
making, carpentry, general farming, and counter sales- 
manship, we should find practically no association of the 
various groups of students, except in evenings, holidays, 
and at other leisure time. 

Of course, we are talking here about " real " vocational 
schools — those that mean business and not dilettantism. 
The writer knows, of course, of several alleged day voca- 
tional schools which have no Saturday session, which are 
open only 190 days in the year, and whose students cease 
work in the early afternoon to play baseball. But these 
give us only travesties of vocational education. They 
are only slightly modified schools of general education. 
They may have as their goal the " five-hour day and the 
five-day week/' but they are yet far from seriously reflect- 



3 oo OBJECTIVES OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

ing the standards of earnest and competent work that have 
brought civilization to its present position. 

There are, however, certain methods by which voca- 
tional schools of a genuine kind can contribute both to 
the extended culture and to the democratization of their 
Students. Definite objectives for such action are to be 
found by careful social studies of superior workers among 
those now influential in any community. That farmer, 
bricklayer, salesman, housewife, or factory operative 
whom we most approve is one who so organizes his time 
and the expenditures of his energy that he gives of these 
in due proportions respectively to his vocation, his rest, 
his family, his recreation, his personal culture, and his 
civic obligations. But the disposition and the understand- 
ing required thus to organize life are themselves in large 
part products of education, school or non-school. 

Let the vocational school of farming, then, begin habit- 
uating the prospective farmer to a proper disposal of his 
one hundred and sixty-eight hours weekly. Let it provide 
first for a working day of eight hours to which shall be 
given on the whole the freshest of available working 
energies. Let it then suggest proper recreations (social 
and intellectual, perhaps, rather than physical, for the 
farmer) outside of working hours ; let it inspire and guide 
students in forming tastes for good reading, music, social 
intercourse, and thus lay more secure the cultural founda- 
tions which are to enrich the farmer's life. 

In the second place, we recognize that each competent 
worker whom we approve as citizen as well as worker has 
attained to those special kinds of social insight and civic 
appreciation which his particular vocation makes possible 
and significant. Every vocation necessarily develops a 
large degree of special kinds of social consciousness 
among its followers — and these are sometimes in line 



DEMOCRACY AND "INDUSTRIALISM" 301 

with the general social well-being, and sometimes at cross 
purposes with it. 

Let no one make the gross error of assuming that the 
major responsibilities of the citizen are, or can be, taught 
in connection with vocational training. The efficient 
medical school now gives its students certain professional 
appreciations, ideals, and varieties of social insight; but 
these pertain primarily to the special social responsibilities 
as to which the medical profession is unique. It is dis- 
tinctly not the province of the medical school to produce 
that wide range of civic attitudes, ideals, and forms of 
insight as respects, which men are united in the same 
nation, local community, common form of family life, 
and moral standards, irrespective of the fact that, occu- 
pationally, some are plumbers, some bakers, some lawyers, 
and some railway operatives. 

In connection with preparation for each vocation, 
therefore, can be taught the group ethics, the desirable 
social relationships, and obligations, internal and external, 
of that vocation. Though not all nor even a major por- 
tion of desirable civic education (except in the minds of 
educational mystics), this portion is supremely vital and 
important. As any individual grows in vocational com- 
petency it will usually be found that motive and appercep- 
tiveness for this form of social education will wax rapidly. 
After all, one of the most real of the centers of each man's 
life is to be found in his vocation, which, like his family 
and his homeland, contains endless potentialities for hap^ 
piness or for unhappiness, according as social adjustment 
is right or wrong. 

4. DEMOCRACY AND " INDUSTRIALISM " 

Some of the keenest opponents of certain phases of 
proposed public vocational education are those who are in 



302 OBJECTIVES OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

revolt against what is vaguely termed " modern industrial- 
ism." Their opposition is, therefore, not directed at all 
against professional education ; only slightly against agri- 
cultural and home-making education; and they exhibit 
no animus against the rather innocuous commercial educa- 
tion which public schools now provide. These opponents 
have even become tolerant, recently, toward " trade " edu- 
cation in so far as it seems to prepare for the handi- 
craft callings. 

But their hostility is strong against all attempts to 
provide vocational training for the wage-earning callings 
in highly organized fields of production — manufacturing, 
mining, railway and steamer transportation, food packing, 
and the like. These are the economic areas, of course, 
in which specialized organization, applications of science 
and invention, corporation control, and use of capital have 
proceeded farthest. Here develop far-reaching cleavages 
between " labor " and " capital," between wage-takers on 
the one side and interest and profit-takers on the other. 
Here are occurring those revolutionary manifestations 
which express the blind gropings of millions of dissatisfied 
workers as well as, doubtless, the schemings and plot- 
tings of a limited number of fanatics and scoundrels, for 
the heaven of " industrial democracy." 

It is not practicable in this chapter to examine current 
aspirations for industrial democracy. There are those 
who insist that economic industrialism gives labor more 
democracy than it has ever enjoyed since man emerged 
from his forest dwellings. But many others see in a 
highly developed wage system only a modern evolution of 
slavery. To some, the achievement of industrial democ- 
racy is at least as practicable as the achievement of politi- 
cal democracy. To others, production highly developed 
and economic necessitates kinds of centralization and 



DEMOCRACY AND "INDUSTRIALISM" 303 

specialization which are no more consonant with certain 
of the aspirations of democracy than are the conditions of 
military efficiency. 

But we are here in the midst of a conflict into which 
the educator cannot profitably enter. So involved and 
uncertain, and in the strictest sense so* irrelevant, are the 
issues to education that the educator may well cry, " A 
plague upon both your houses." 

The fact is that it is not primarily the business of the 
educator to serve either capital or labor, employer or 
employed, radical or conservative. His responsibilities 
are primarily directed to the task of fitting the rising 
generation for the oncoming social order as that can best 
be understood by him. What will be the probable condi- 
tions, standards, requirements, and potentialities for 
further development of that social order he must be in- 
formed by those workers whose primary concern is its 
study and reconstruction — statemen, social scientists, 
leaders of partisan movements, and the like. 

Before each child of to-day lie some, but only some, 
economic possibilities. So far as human prophecy can 
determine, the Sahara Desert and Labrador will not be- 
come fertile within the next generation. The habitable 
and wealth-producing areas of the world will steadily 
become more crowded. Revolutionary inventions for con- 
trolling natural forces are possible but unlikely within 
the lifetimes of people now living. Standards of living 
will grow, and desires to maintain them will evoke many 
sacrifices. Regimentation, specialization, and scientific 
direction of economic production will doubtless increase. 
The efficient worker will, except under extraordinary 
conditions, command more of the products of the service 
of his fellow, whereby he must live, than the ineffi- 
cient worker. 



3 o4 OBJECTIVES OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

These and numberless others like them are the social 
(or rather economic) objectives which must chiefly deter- 
mine educational objectives. Only those kinds of educa- 
tion, therefore, will be adequately democratic which work 
toward these objectives. Those who would use the school 
system as a means of furthering their partisan economic 
faiths and beliefs must be warned to take hands off, as 
America has already warned those who would use the 
schools in the interests of religious or political propa- 
ganda. The youth of America — all that youth, rich and 
poor, male and female, black and white, gifted and 
ungifted — under a democratic public-school system, is 
entitled to reasonable opportunities to prepare for life as 
it is, or probably will soon be, life physically, life cul- 
turally, life socially, and life vocationally. We may, after 
we have done the day's work in a world of realities, dream 
of Utopias if we will. 

5. PUBLIC SUPPORT OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

A few years ago it would have been necessary and 
appropriate to give serious consideration to the question, 
" Is the support and control of vocational education a 
proper public function? " Fortunately, general defense 
of an affirmative reply to this question is not longer neces- 
sary. The passage by Congress of what is known as the 
Smith-Hughes Act by a unanimous vote of both houses 
once for all affirmed the conviction of the American 
people that vocational education ranks in social import- 
ance equal to any other form and therefore deserves no 
less the encouragement and sustenance of public support. 

Only in one quarter does doubt still abide. We all 
believe in vocational education — if it is properly refined 
and diluted. But not a few of us of academic tradition 
still gag at realistic " shirt sleeves," grimy vocational edu- 



SUPPORT OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 305 

cation, very much as our forebears gagged at " dirty " 
manual occupations in general, leaving them to slaves, 
bondmen, and " common mechanics,' ' We admire pro- 
cesses by which a girl is taught stenography, but we 
shrink for contemplating the possibilities of teaching, in 
suitable vocational schools, men to mine coal, make shoes, 
pack meats, or fire engines, or girls to make cigarettes, run 
knitting machines, or wait on hotel tables. Especially 
are we hostile toward training workers for the highly 
organized industries. " Let these big industries train their 
own workers " is our undemocratic and unintelligent re- 
fusal. Unthinkingly we here again blindly accept the 
natural and, for civilized societies, cruel principle, " To 
them that hath shall be given; and from them that hath 
not shall be taken away even that which they have." The 
light of genuine democracy will sometime reach even the 
most academic (and aristocratic) of us. Generous public 
support of all forms of vocational education is one of the 
most democratic of the ideals and aims of our ages. 



20 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY OF 
EDUCATION 1 

Of what high crimes and misdemeanors has the pro- 
fessor of pedagogy been guilty to draw down upon himself 
the hymn of hate so vigorously chanted by the professor 
in the January (191 6) Unpopular Review ("If I Were 
a College President ") ? How has this diffident and tim- 
orous newcomer into the circles of the orthodox, the 
" regular " professors, offended? For offended he surely 
has, and grievously, because the professor who " never 
carps," would, if he could, " shut the mouths, and vacate 
the chairs of the professor of pedagogy and all his satel- 
lites." With the fierce wrath of the outraged just man, 
the professor — clearly he is an orthodox, old-guard " reg- 
ular," among professors — indicts the entire tribe of inso- 
lent interlopers who profess to study and teach " peda- 
gogy " : " of the innumerable college men with whom I 
have talked, not one has ever expressed anything but 
contempt of the department of pedagogy as an educational 
futility, and abhorrence of it as a meddling nuisance." 

These bitter words will doubtless command no little 
applause in the inner circles of professordom. They seem 
to express feelings of aversion and hostility too long 
suppressed in academic circles. The professor of peda- 
gogy, once a suppliant, seems to have become a disturber 
of the peace, a force to* be reckoned with, — perhaps even 

*This chapter, in substantially its present form, first ap- 
peared as an article in the Unpopular (now the Unpartizan) 
Review, under the title "The Professor of Pedagogy." This fact 
explains peculiarities of treatment. 
306 



THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 307 

a heretic holding open intercourse with the powers of evil. 
We are curious to find with what offences he is charged, 
for most of us seem to remember him as a rather unprom- 
ising candidate for professorial recognition, and certainly 
a most unlikely aspirant for professorial influence and 
power. What has happened lately to make him now 
so detested and feared — even in " a college almost 
large enough and quite ancient enough to be called 
a university " ? 

Not many years have passed since this camel-like pro- 
fessor of pedagogy began to poke his head into the sacred 
tent of learning. The faculty of Amherst College, indeed, 
once in its unsophisticated youth, suggested that he be in- 
vited to look in : " But whatever may be thought of these 
proposals, (i.e., a system of electives), there is one new 
department of great practical importance which it appears 
to us should be annexed to the college, as soon as the funds 
will anyhow permit — we mean the Science of education. 
When it is considered how this lies at the very foundation 
of all improvement . . . it is truly wonderful to us that 
so little attention has been bestowed upon the science of 
mental culture, and that there is not now, and never has 
been, a single professor of education on this side of the 
Atlantic." Thus the faculty of Amherst College to the 
trustees — in 1826. But the trustees were wiser. They 
held the beast aloof from Amherst, even though he nosed 
about the canvas of Washington College (in Western 
Pennsylvania) in 183 1, New York University in 1832, 
Brown University in 1850, Antioch College in 1853, Iowa 
University in 1873, and Hiram College from 1870 to 1882. 

But not until 1879, when President Angell established 
in Michigan University the first professorship of the 
Science and Art of Teaching, did the camel finally get 
headroom in the tent. Thereafter he insinuated or fought 



3 o8 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

his hateful way inward until he has become (with a slight 
change of figure) a " huge and wriggling arm of the 
school octopus, reaching up to the college and sucking it 
steadily downwards." 

Now camels, octopuses and professors of pedagogy 
are all, doubtless, horrid creatures, but also, like the fleas 
on David Harum's dog, they may have their uses in the 
inscrutable economy of an all-wise Providence. The pres- 
ent writer has had several years' experience asa" satel- 
lite" professor of pedagogy. He has cherished no 
illusions regarding his professional standing with the old- 
line professors of the institutions in which he has served. 
His " subject " has had nothing of the fine ancient leather 
flavor of the classical studies; it has made little use of 
the elaborate equipments of glass and brass used in teach- 
ing the sciences; it has possessed few of the endless and 
bewildering intricacies which make the modern languages 
such excellent " disciplines " ; and as a means of making 
students " work hard " it has been distinctly inferior to 
mathematics. Here and there, indeed, a few hardy pro- 
fessors of pedagogy have sought, and sometimes won, 
fellowship in the ranks of the real professors of history 
and philosophy, because they have confined themselves 
to those phases of the history and philosophy of education 
in which some semblance of scholarly work, according to 
the currently accepted conventions, has been possible. 
But in the main these " meddling nuisances " have pro- 
fessed to teach " principles of education," " applied psy- 
chology," " genetic psychology," " educational admin- 
istration," " problems of secondary education," and, 
weirdest of all " child study " ! These subjects, though 
in the olden days — from 1895 to 1905 — they sometimes 
aroused the curiosity and secured only the half -contemptu- 
ous toleration of the orthodox professors, seldom stirred 



THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 309 

their vengeful and destructive instincts. Perhaps " the 
flummery of words " was not sufficiently stripped away ! 
We satellite teachers, at any rate, were in those days suf- 
fered to exist, notwithstanding that even professors of 
psychology and sociology felt at liberty to make us ridicu- 
lous. We were certainly not threatened with exile and 
oblivion; no hymns of hate were composed in our dis- 
honor. Probably none of the real professors thought we 
did any good ; but neither did they attribute to us powers 
of doing serious harm. We were the fruit of the eccentric 
notions, or of the weak yieldings to outside pressure, of 
the president ; or else the trustees, responsive to an unac- 
countable and probably whimsical public demand, had 
forced us into the institution over the head of the un- 
willing president. Time could be trusted to dispose of this 
as of other fads, it was believed. 

But, from the standpoint of orthodox professordom of 
to-day, the professor of pedagogy has evidently turned out 
to be anything but a temporary and harmless by-product 
of the evolutionary processes of higher education. He 
is now " feared as one of the powers behind the throne." 
His department is " the last and one of the most noxious 
of the evils flowing from our quantitative standards." It 
is entrenched behind " the tyranny of school boards and 
town councils acting through regents and president." If 
it could be cut off, " the schools themselves being then 
forced to follow the higher institution, instead of trying 
to lead, would be benefited as much as the college.' ' So 
deep-seated, indeed, is the evil that " the very mention of 
such radical measures " (for its correction) costs the pro- 
fessor his " promotion." In other words, the camel now 
seems to have his whole ill-smelling bulk within the tent, 
to the complete discomfort of the original tenant, whose 
eviction from his warm quarters seems, in turn, to be 



3io THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

threatened. (Surely — horrid thought — the professor of 
pedagogy did not obtain the presidency!) 

But the judicious will feel that the professor who has 
failed of deserved promotion, because he forcibly ex- 
pressed his strong convictions, can hardly do justice to 
the professor of pedagogy. The defendant must surely 
have a case that deserves at least a hearing. College de- 
partments of pedagogy can hardly be said to be excessively 
popular outside of college walls, and clearly they are 
anything but popular inside those walls. Nevertheless, 
since 1879 tnev have grown very rapidly in scope of ac- 
tivity and in influence. The professors directing these 
departments have sometimes been visionaries, and more 
often they have been too youthful and too much given to 
imagining, saying, and doing — but especially saying — un- 
wise things. But on the whole, these men have been en- 
thusiasts, much interested in helping the college to render 
greater service to the public. Rarely have departments of 
pedagogy. been established as a result of any definite de- 
mand arising from within the college itself ; rather they 
have developed in response to pressure from without — 
pressure which has been exerted by parents, by interested 
citizens, and especially by school authorities. The voices 
of professors of education have been heard with approval, 
not so much because of the message conveyed — which, in 
truth, has often been meager enough — but because they 
seemed to bear promise that at last the college, from its 
aristocratic mansion on the hilltop, was sending a 
few friendly visitors to> inquire as to the well- 
being of the schools — the schools of the people — which 
had heretofore, indeed, been forced "to follow the 
higher institution." 

It has become the business of the professor of peda- 
gogy to study and to teach the facts about education— the 



THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 311 

needs for it, the aims set for it, the means and methods 
employed in it, and the available evaluations of its re- 
sults. At first he taught of education at a distance — 
the history of education; and in the cloudlands of specu- 
lation about "principles" — the philosophy (sometimes 
only the metaphysics) of education. Then, responding 
simultaneously to demands from without college walls and 
to his own quickened conscience, he began to teach of 
education as one of the great realities of to-day, as some- 
thing to be found everywhere, as something which should 
be the concern of all well-informed men, and as something 
quite capable of being studied and improved in accord- 
ance with scientific methods. The purposes of the schools 
of to-day, the powers and the frailties of their learners, 
the instruments and practices of teaching, the tangible 
results of the instruction and training as now variously 
given — all these became finally the objects of the study, 
and the subjects of the teaching, of the professor of peda- 
gogy. A new and unexplored world of human action 
opened to him for study, interpretation and research. In 
this world, indeed, the purposeful direction and control of 
human energy, as manifested in feeling and intelligence, 
had long prevailed through processes described as educa- 
tion ; but this education was still carried on in accordance 
with ancient customs and traditions analogous to those 
which constituted the philosophy and practice of mediaeval 
medicine. He saw that the time must soon come when the 
immense mass of faiths, beliefs, traditions, superstitions, 
customs, and habits which now serve as the foundations 
and framework of educational practice would all have to 
undergo examination in the light of scientific methods, and 
when there would have to be substituted for many of these 
products of an age of faith, principles based upon tested 
knowledge, itself the product of objective study and defi- 



3 i2 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

nite experimentation. He now saw education in its count- 
less aspects as hitherto only a few seers — the Rousseaus 
and Pestalozzis — had seen it. Visions came fast, as his 
eyes were opened, and, like other youthful pioneers 
in new fields, he spoke easily and, perhaps, too often, of 
his visions. 

But his newly acquired and still very imperfect clair- 
voyance was destined soon to produce trouble wherever 
ancient methods of teaching and learning persisted. He 
could not but perceive that the secondary school, for 
example, is, in many of its phases, still existing in its age 
of faith. The aims controlling the selection and organ- 
ization of its studies are based mainly upon ancient or 
accidentally formed beliefs, its methods of teaching are in 
large part simply old customs, and its heart is still set on 
magic, miracles, and faith healing. Tradition, dogma and 
mystic generalization constitute the bulk of its pedagogi- 
cal learning, and blind adherence to ancient habit, tem- 
pered by occasional changes in fashion, determine, in the 
main, its practice — and in their adherence to their faiths 
and superstitions, the conservatives in secondary educa- 
tion receive no little support and comfort from the de- 
votees of tradition in our colleges. 

The professor of pedagogy was so situated that he was 
forced to study existing secondary schools, and to reflect 
upon the significance of their stated aims, their habitual 
practices, their alleged achievements. He saw that their 
teachers were usually college graduates — whose education 
had sometimes included one or more prescribed courses 
in pedagogy — but who had become high-school teachers 
with no adequate professional training. These young 
graduates seldom learned to teach until they had spoiled 
several classes in the process of acquiring experience with, 



THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 313 

and some knowledge of, adolescent youths. They were 
almost always bunglers at first, not necessarily because of 
any marked deficiency in knowledge of the subjects they 
tried to teach, but conspicuously because of lack of knowl- 
edge of the objects of such teaching — including not only 
the pupils to be taught, but also the powers and qualities 
expected to be produced in them through such teaching. 
It usually took these bunglers several years to learn, by 
painful personal experience, the simplest elements of the 
arts of teaching. 

All this the professor of pedagogy saw — could not help 
seeing; and all the time the orthodox professors of the 
old-line subjects — the classical languages, mathematics, 
history, physics, chemistry, English, French, German — 
were grinding out their daily grist of lectures and lessons 
for those who were soon to be teachers, and always quite 
oblivious to the existence of high-school boys and girls, 
indifferent to the social significance of multiplying high 
schools, ignoring the endless failures of young high-school 
teachers in the field, and contemptuously hostile to all sug- 
gestions that the liberal-arts college, expected by the public 
to turn out properly qualified high-school teachers, was not 
only doing its freely accepted task very badly, but was 
blind to the larger present opportunities for increasing 
the general usefulness of the college itself. 

It became clear that, in spite of its refusal to recognize 
this fact, the largest single definable function of the so- 
called liberal-arts college, as understood by the public, 
was the preparation of teachers for secondary schools. 
In recent years, when in America the attendance on public 
high schools alone has passed the million mark, probably 
not fewer than five thousand new high-school teachers 
are annually required. Public sentiment demands that 



v_ 



314 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

these shall be college graduates. The colleges would be 
greatly distressed if their graduates were not freely ac- 
cepted for these positions. Nevertheless, college faculties, 
strongly attached to traditions of general or liberal educa- 
tion, have neglected to face their responsibilities as to the 
adequate professional equipment of those of their students 
who will probably become teachers. To a very serious 
extent, indeed, they have opposed efforts to insure that 
even a small amount of such special training shall be 
given in a definite and effective way. 

The development of departments of education in col- 
lege and university not only produced agencies charged 
with the responsibility of studying these matters and pro- 
posing remedies for defects recognized, but, equally im- 
portant, these became centers of positive contact with the 
public-school system. The long-ignored complaints of 
school authorities henceforth received here sympathetic 
consideration. In steadily increasing measure the depart- 
ment of education has been looked to as the responsible 
agency of the college in recommending teachers; and it 
has been obliged to strive to live up to the responsibilities 
of this important position. It has been forced to trans- 
mit the pressure from outside the college — a pressure for 
the better equipment of teachers — to the various depart- 
ments, few of which welcomed the demands thus made 
upon them for better work or for different work. The 
professor of pedagogy, insistently repeating and inter- 
preting the needs of the public-school system, has thus 
naturally become the target for abuse as a " meddling 
nuisance," the promoter of " educational futilities." 

Is it likely that the professor of pedagogy will in the 
near future become, also, a critic of college courses and 
college teaching, especially as these exist in the non-pro- 



THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 315 

fessional colleges? There are indications that this is 
probable. The liberal-arts college is not at present giving 
satisfaction to its students, to its faculty, or to the public. 
It is undoubtedly approaching a period of prolonged self- 
examination. It is frequently asserted that students in 
the more prosperous and popular of these colleges do not 
generally take their work seriously. Only a few of them 
seem to give to the " enterprise of learning " the enthusi- 
asm and devotion that their fellows in large numbers give 
to athletics and other student activities. Rarely is an 
instructor popular because of the brilliant and successful 
character of his teaching. The public does not yet appear 
to appreciate the (alleged) actual purposes of the liberal 
education for the giving of which the non-professional 
college is supposed to exist. Practical men constantly 
insist on evaluating the results of college education in 
terms of success in business — in wage-earning. The pro- 
longed efforts of college authorities to impress upon the 
public an understanding of the supposed purposes and 
assumed values of liberal education, have indeed borne 
very little and very poor fruit, when journalists, profes- 
sional men, business leaders, and even educators them- 
selves are willing seriously to debate the question, " Does 
a college education pay (in terms of dollars and cents) ? " 
The professor of pedagogy cannot but see that the 
actual educational aims of the liberal-arts college are as 
yet no less lacking in definite and scientific formulation 
than are those of the secondary school. Traditional dog- 
mas as to educational values, the loose generalizations of 
a now discredited system of speculative psychology, and 
the inertia of custom explain in large part the persistence 
and " protected " character of many of the courses of- 
fered. Latin, French, German, mathematics, logic, pihys- 



3 i6 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

ics — in fact, almost the entire range of studies prescribed 
or recommended in the more conservative colleges, are 
approved as elements in liberal education on the alleged 
grounds that they possess an unequalled culture content 
or provide mental training of an important and necessary 
character, and which presumably cannot otherwise be ob- 
tained. But these subjects are usually so taught as to 
evoke little vital self -activity on the part of students. 
Most of the instructors have, indeed, never given serious 
consideration, let alone study, to various possible methods 
of so organizing and presenting materials as to render 
their teaching more effective. Their methods of teaching 
are obviously patterned after those of their own former 
teachers — often a case of the blind leading the blind. 
There is no conclusive evidence that the traditional college 
subjects, thus taught, possess any unusual educational 
values. It is probable, indeed, that they are pursued in a 
spirit so perfunctory as quite to deprive them of the 
values which they might otherwise possess, and which 
may even now be found in other studies pursued with 
genuine interest because the resulting knowledge promises 
to be of some real value to the learner. 

To the professor of pedagogy the improvement of col- 
lege teaching will doubtless soon present itself as a vital 
and important new problem. But the approach to the 
study of this problem and of the numerous special re- 
lated problems will obviously call into question the whole 
scheme of aims, immediate and remote, which now con- 
trol, or are asserted to control, in college education. The 
concrete and immediate values supposed to be realized 
through certain studies will inevitably be made the subject 
of scientific inquiry. The ultimate values alleged to be 
realized through college courses — described in terms of 



THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 317 

loose, vague and abstract generalization, such as " general 
culture," " training for leadership," " education for ser- 
vice," " mental training," " the efficient life," and the 
like — are certainly much to be desired if they are to be 
found this side of Utopia. But the experience of the pro- 
fessor of pedagogy with the theories and practices of 
education on levels below the college has made him sus- 
picious of aims stated as " omnibus generalizations." 
He tends to inquire after specifications, to search for 
tangible results. 

He finds, for example, that orthodox professors often 
condemn the elective system. They usually agree that 
" this extra work for the faculty (in adjusting the infinite 
intricacies produced by a wide range of electives) might 
be abolished by the straightforward and wholesome ex- 
pedient of selecting the studies which really possess the 
quality of educating, and prescribing these for one and 
all alike." But the staggering question always encoun- 
tered is : "Which are these studies ? " Are they Latin, 
Greek and mathematics, or are they economics, govern- 
ment, and American history ? Shall we prescribe French 
and German and omit biology, and must we discard sociol- 
ogy in favor of physics and chemistry ? Shall English lit- 
erature from Chaucer to Milton be included, and American 
literature including the short story be omitted? Must 
young women students " take " mediaeval history and 
forego " Problems of Modern Social Economy " ? In 
some college curricula eugenics and child study are even 
now actually in competition with Anglo-Saxon and seven- 
teenth-century drama — which should give way? The 
fact is clear that the elective system has spread, not be- 
cause any considerable number of professors have 
approved it, but because many preferred it to a greater 



318 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

possible evil — the reduction or elimination of their own 
cherished courses; and this condition has threatened the 
defenders of the ancient subjects no less than it has the 
expounders of sociology, Spanish, the modern drama, 
and economic biology. 

It is inevitably true that " the enormous range of sub- 
jects taught in our colleges . . . means endless details 
of management and the adjustment of infinite intri- 
cacies. " And clearly " this extra work for the faculty 
might be abolished by the straightforward and wholesome 
expedient of selecting the studies which really possess the 
quality of educating, and prescribing these for one and all 
alike " (to repeat a choice quotation from the professor). 
But to take this position involves the begging of several 
questions: What is the college for? What is the faculty 
for? How important, comparatively, are the ease and 
comfort of the faculty and the needs of students? And, 
above all, who is to< decide as to the studies which really 
" possess the quality of educating " (for a life of leader- 
ship in a modern democracy, we must presume, since this 
is so often the burden of professorial eulogies of the col- 
lege) ? It may be that, after all, we shall have to call 
upon the professor of pedagogy to answer these questions, 
and to lift the college out of the slough of despond into 
which, even according to its best friends, it seems to 
have fallen. 

Is it not inevitable, then, that the professor of peda- 
gogy, however unprepared he may be for the huge prob- 
lems involved, must turn to the field of college teaching 
as a promising one, first for research and later for con- 
structive (or destructive) action? And is it not certain 
that his invasion of this field will produce the same fears 
and arouse the same angry resentments that followed, in 



THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 319 

the medical world, the work of Pasteur and Lister, and in 
theology the probings of the authors of the higher criti- 
cism? But, on the other hand, does he not typify, how- 
ever crudely, the introduction of the scientific spirit into 
education? Must not the conservatives learn to adopt 
and supply some of his methods in defence of their own 
preconceptions and customs? In fact, is it not probable 
that the professor himself, had he been given the presi- 
dency, would have set on foot a series of vigorous inquir- 
ies, and have made a number of definite proposals the 
outcome of which doubtless would have been the same 
temperately progressive programs as have been recom- 
mended by President Meiklejohn, whose fingers, to those 
who know him, seem by no means " nerveless " ? 2 

2 Referring to the charge, in " the professor's " article, that 
President Meiklejohn (of Amherst College) had failed to grasp 
the opportunity of making Amherst a " classical " college. 



INDEX 



Abnormal children, education of, 

Advertising, art in, 177 
Alpha-beta distinctions, 49, 71 
Art, America's place in, 191 ; ap- 
preciation of, 198; historic 
social values of, 167; in adver- 
tising, 177; in decoration, 178; 
in love, 172 ; in modern produc- 
tion, 195; in recreation, 176; in 
religion, 169; in war, 167; in 
work, 170; new values of, 175; 
popular, 194; present demands 
for, 157 ; the problem of values 
in, 162 
Art education, aims of, 156-182; 
objectives of, 183-206; popular, 
197; problems of, 188; terms 
denned, 191 

Bagley, William C, reference to, 
24 

Chronological order in history, 

224 
Citizens as employers, 253 
Citizenship, defects in present 

education for, 242; education 

for, 240 
Civic education, 243 ; aim of, 225 ; 

as appreciation, 255 ; case basis 

of, 248; for leadership, 251; 

group diagnosis for, 259; new 

needs for, 245 ; of " followers," 

249; of women, 254; specific 

needs for, 246 
College extrance examination 

board questions, 210 

Decorative art, 178 
Democratic, education for, 268 
Democratic education, aspects of, 

290 
Departments of education, 314 



Education, faith of American in, 
106; objectives of the study of, 
306-319 

Educational sociology, aims of, 
20; methods in, 34; proposing 
for, 15; recent tendencies in, 
16-18 

Educational values of mathe- 
matics, 124 

Education for vocation, impor- 
tance of, 293 

Effective system in college, 317 

Fine arts in liberal education, 
116; social functions of, 156- 
182; the, in education, 31 

Formulas in mathematics, 139 

Graphic art, 183-206 
Greek and Latin in liberal educa- 
tion, 117 

High school, accepted changes in 
the, 79; physics in, 147; the 
future of the, 77-93 

High-school curricula, 87; flexi- 
bility in the, 75 ; objectives of, 
68; probable changes in the, 

72-75 
High-school mathematics, 128- 

134 

High schools, fundamental feat- 
ures of, 65; possible courses 
in, 87-93; vocational education 
in, 67. 

History as a school study, 30; 
as now taught, 208 ; chronologi- 
cal order in, 233; illusions in 
teaching, 212; knowledge of, 
for citizenship, 220 ; in schools, 
criticism of, 231 ; objectives of, 
207-239; replacement of, by 
social sciences, 235 

History study, beta types of, 237 ; 
organization of, 232; scope of, 
215 

321 



322 



INDEX 



Industrial democracy, 302 
Industrialism and vocational edu- 
cation, 301 

? Junior high school, 27, 38-64 ; ad- 
ministrative proposals for, 40- 
42; controlling principles of 
flexibility in, 62 ; elective studies 
in, 55 ; elements in possible 
courses, 52-55; modern lan- 
guage in, 47; need of, 42; pre- 
scriptive studies, 55; problems 
of, 38; varied objectives in, 48 

Latin, liberal education without, 
94-119; as a barrier, 100; as a 
prescriptive, 96; as related to 
English, 102 
Liberal arts college, aims of, 315 
Liberal education, English in, 
114; improvement in, 70; need 
of, 107-112 

Mathematics as means of teach- 
ing formulae, 139 

Mathematics, distinctions between 
consumers' and producers' 
needs in, 26; in education, 32; 
in junior high school, 128-132 ; 
objectives of, 120-146; read- 
justment now taking place in, 
122; in rural schools, 130; in 
senior high schools, 132-134; 
in vocational schools, 134-136 

Mathematics and " social " topics, 
138 

Moral character, formation of, 
267-280 

Moral education, 263-266; 267- 
280 

Moral education in schools at 
present, 270 

Moral excellence in present 
schools, 271 

Moral training, spread of, 263 

Mental discipline as objective, 70 

Mental training in high schools, 

84 
Modern languages in liberal edu- 
cation, 118 



National unity, 24 

Objectives of art education, 183- 
206 

Pedagogy, study of, 307 
Physics, as a cultural course, 152 ; 
for vocation, 150; objectives of, 

147-155 
Plastic art, 183-206 
Popular art, 194 
Prevocational mathematics, 130 
Prevocational physics, 154 
Professor of pedagogy, 306 

Recreation, art in, 176 

Rural school mathematics, 130 

Secondary education, scope of, 
95; formalism of, 103 

Social education, aims of, 225 ; 
new bases for, 257; objectives 
of, 218, 227, 240-266; place for, 
229; time for, 221 

Socialization of education, 17 

Social objectives of vocational 
education, 281-305 

Social reform, 13 

Social sciences, in liberal educa- 
tion, 115; in secondary educa- 
tion, 216; methods in, 223 

Social science studies, 207-239 

Social values of art, 166 

Sociology, analyzed, 12 

Values in education, 19 

Vocational education, distinctive- 
ness of, 284 ; dualism in, 287 ; 
in secondary schools, 82; is it 
democratic?, 289; public sup- 
port of, 304 ; related to general 
education, 298; related to soci- 
ology, 21 ; social objectives of, 
281-305; through schools, 288; 
varieties of, 281 

Vocational guidance through 
mathematics, 137 

Vocational-school mathematics, 
134-136 

Vocational schools, need for, 283 ; 
where effective, 296 

Vocational studies, 29 



